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"Our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us"

https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1984340182351634571
32•wrong-mexican•1w ago
https://xcancel.com/wtgowers/status/1984340182351634571

"I crossed an interesting threshold yesterday, which I think many other mathematicians have been crossing recently as well. In the middle of trying to prove a result, I identified a statement that looked true and that would, if true, be useful to me.

"Instead of trying to prove it, I asked GPT5 about it, and in about 20 seconds received a proof. The proof relied on a lemma that I had not heard of (the statement was a bit outside my main areas), so although I am confident I'd have got there in the end.

"the time it would have taken me would probably have been of order of magnitude an hour (an estimate that comes with quite wide error bars). So it looks as though we have entered the brief but enjoyable era where our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us.

"PS In case anyone's worried that it used a lemma I hadn't heard of, I checked that the lemma was not a hallucination."

Comments

kenjackson•1w ago
For some reason this sort of thing bothers a lot of people. I think it’s great that we have a new tool in the toolbelt.
WhyOhWhyQ•1w ago
Gowers wrote about AI in the late 90's. He predicted a short golden age where mathematicians would still be useful to the AI. We are in that golden age now, apparently. The AI will soon eclipse all humans in mathematics and the art form of mathematics will cease in its present form.
johnisgood•1w ago
Could you elaborate on your last sentence please?
WhyOhWhyQ•1w ago
Go read Gowers' essay.
estimator7292•1w ago
Form your own independent thoughts
auggierose•3h ago
How about a link to it?
siva7•3h ago
Think of it like software development. That art form also deceased due to AI. Remember the famous painters and hackers essay? It's not more relevant.
squigz•3h ago
Mathematics in its current form, you say? Like, for example, when we transitioned from doing things manually to using calculators/computers?
muldvarp•3h ago
It's because I still need to earn a living and this technology threatens my ability to do so in the near future.

It also significantly changes my current job to something I didn't sign up to.

mettamage•3h ago
Well yea, but school also tried to educate us for the unforeseen future.

Or at least my school system tried to (Netherlands).

This didn’t fully come out of the blue. We have been told to expect the unexpected.

muldvarp•19m ago
> This didn’t fully come out of the blue. We have been told to expect the unexpected.

It absolutely did. Five years ago people would have told you that white collar jobs where mostly un-automatable and software engineering was especially safe due to the complexity.

Alex2037•3h ago
given that there had never been a technological advancement that was successfully halted to preserve the jobs it threatened to make obsolete, don't you see the futility of complaining about it? even if there was widespread opposition to AI - and no, there isn't - the capital would disregard it. no ragtag team of quirky rebels are going to blow up this multi-trillion dollar death star.
muldvarp•16m ago
> don't you see the futility of complaining about it?

I'm not complaining to stop this. I'm sure it won't be stopped. I'm explaining why some people who work for a living don't like this technology.

I'm honestly not sure why others do. It pretty much doesn't matter what work you do for a living. If this technology can replace a non-negligible part of the white collar workforce it will have negative consequences for you. You don't have to like that just because you can't stop it.

lacker•50m ago
I personally like AI but it has definitely shifted my job. There is less "writing code", more "reviewing code", and more "writing sentences in English". I can understand people being frustrated.

To me it's like a halfway step toward management. When you start being a manager, you also start writing less code and having a lot more conversations.

iwontberude•40m ago
Yes reviewing robot code submitted by other humans. Oh the joy of paying bills.
muldvarp•23m ago
> To me it's like a halfway step toward management. When you start being a manager, you also start writing less code and having a lot more conversations.

I didn't want to get into management, because it's boring. Now I got forced into management and don't even get paid more.

deaux•3m ago
> It's because I still need to earn a living and this technology threatens my ability to do so in the near future.

That's certainly not the reason most HNers are giving - I'm seeing far more claims that LLMs are entirely meaningless becauzs either "they cannot make something they haven't seen before" or "half the time they hallucinate". The latter even appears as one of the first replies in this post's link, the X thread!

truculent•3h ago
> For some reason

> _brief_ but enjoyable era

musicale•1w ago
> we have entered the brief but enjoyable era where our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us

Well that's comforting.

Tomcollins4•3h ago
Inb4 simonw claiming he has discovered superintelligence in his Altman / Amodei check.
bgwalter•3h ago
Gowers, Tao, Aaronson. Are there others hyping "AI"?

All of these seem to subscribe to "inevitability", have no issues that their research relies on a handful of oligarchs and that all of their thoughts and attempts are recorded and tracked on centralized servers.

I bet mathematical research hasn't sped up one bit due to "AI".

trueismywork•3h ago
I am another one. My work in mathematics has sped up personally due to AI.

Whenever you start to prove new results, you get a lot of small lemme that are probably true but you need to check them and find a good constant which works with them.

Checking is by theorem provers and searching is by machines. You still need to figure out what you want to prove (which results are more important).

But rest can get automated away quite quickly.

bgwalter•3h ago
Ok, I expect the Riemann hypothesis to be proven any day now.
marcosdumay•3h ago
Yes, those things are really good search engines for areas you are not completely at home in.
gyomu•3h ago
The only thing that matters in the discussion around intelligence is purpose and intent. Intelligence is always applied through intent, and in service of a purpose.

What is the broader context of OP trying to prove a theorem here? There are multiple layers of purpose and intent involved (so he can derive the satisfaction of proving a result, so he can keep publishing and keep his job, so their university department can be competitive, etc), but they all end up pointing at humans.

Computers aren’t going to be spinning in the background proving theorems just because. They will do so because humans intend for them to, in service of their own purposes.

In any discussion about AI surpassing humans in skills/intelligence, the chief concern should be in service of whom.

Tech leaders (ie the people controlling the computers on which the AIs run) like to say that this is for the benefit of all humanity, and that the rewards will be evenly distributed; but the rewards aren’t evenly distributed today, and the benefits are in the hands of a select few; why should that change at their hands?

If AI is successful to the extent which pundits predict/desire, it will likely be accompanied with an uprising of human workers that will make past uprisings (you know, the ones that banned child labor and gave us paid holidays) look like child’s play in comparison.

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