Inside the Secret Meeting Where Mathematicians Struggled to Outsmart AI | The world’s leading mathematicians were stunned by how adept artificial intelligence is at doing their jobs
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-secret-meeting-where-mathematicians-struggled-to-outsmart-ai/
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“Thirty of the world’s most renowned mathematicians traveled to Berkeley, Calif., with some coming from as far away as the U.K. The group’s members faced off in a showdown with a “reasoning” chatbot that was tasked with solving problems they had devised to test its mathematical mettle. After throwing professor-level questions at the bot for two days, the researchers were stunned to discover it was capable of answering some of the [world’s hardest solvable problems](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/9-unsolved-mysteries-in-mathematics/).
“I have colleagues who literally said these models are approaching mathematical genius,” says Ken Ono, a mathematician at the University of Virginia.
The researchers were astonished by how far AI had progressed in the span of one year. Yang Hui He, a mathematician at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences, says, “This is what a very, very good graduate student would be doing—in fact, more.”
The bot was also much faster than a professional mathematician, taking mere minutes to do what it would take such a human expert weeks or months to complete.
“I don’t want to add to the hysteria, but in many ways these large language models are already outperforming most of our best graduate students in the world.”
Who would have guessed that the thing made out of math is good at mathing
They know because the problems are already solved. Feed it the millenium problems and nothing happens.
It’s not like they won’t still be needed, their job is just changed from doing the math to checking the ai’s work
In theory, AI and other labor-saving technologies could do a lot of people’s jobs.
In practice, this is financially impossible until we implement a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
In the absence of UBI, society is forced to create an excessive number of human jobs not because markets actually need all those jobs, but simply because we need a socially acceptable excuse to distribute incomes to the population.
If *leisure time and prosperity itself* is a worthwhile economic goal, then we need to take off our rose-tinted glasses on jobs and implement UBI, and we needed to do it yesterday. Otherwise we’ll stay stuck in a model that maximizes waged employment for its own sake.
It’s very likely that employment is *too high* already for no other reason than the absence of UBI. This overemployment wastes natural & industrial resources, and it wastes our time. It’s probably also a huge contributor to our environmental problems.
Technology has already saved (on paper) a vast amount of human labor; but our monetary system is stuck in the past. UBI is how we get unstuck.
Douchebag: “hey we fed this thing your book”
Math guy: “Does it know what’s on page 37”
Douchebag: “… Actually, yes”
Call me when the AI can solve, unsolved , problems. Call me when it makes new math.
We don’t have mathematicians in order to re-solve old problems. We need them to work on the cutting edge of new ideas in physics and science.