charondaboatman
997
26
10
“The math world is losing its mind over the new solution to an Erdős problem. This is what AI found, how we missed it—and why it matters.”
“ OpenAI announced that one of its models resolved a puzzle known as the unit distance problem without the help of any humans scribbling a bunch of equations on chalkboards. “
“….. , a former OpenAI researcher did some back-of-the-envelope math and estimated it took less than 32 hours….” Well, ….fuck.
https://apple.news/AY-v4q2_JQVqe4gP5s-HmHA
EaNasirsExcellentHighGradeCopper
computers have been solving math since they were created. big whoop.
L0rdinquisit0r
its what AI was originally invented for not making fanfics and editing people out of historic images
charondaboatman
To be clearer, this is a good thing, this is like the use of AI for protein folding. The speed and efficiency is the reason for the “Well,..fuck.”
DummieThicc
ToSisPoS
The combine mathematics achievements of every mathematician up to this point all jellied together solved it.
“ai” is not a little robot that looks like young Haley Joel Osment.
DummieThicc
No one cares. Fuck AI
whiskeywonka
This is exactly what AI should be used for, and it takes far far far less resources to do this than it does to be data harvesters and embedded into every damn new device. Look at the work done on blood types. Look at the DNA work. We could remove many inherited illnesses in the next 5~10 years. AI /does not have to be the massive crapstain/ that most people think of.
HogWashDiddler
This. There is most certainly uses for AI that could benefit a lot of areas which doesnt require massive burdening infrastructure. The problem is, we live in a greed fueled society ran by a handful of selfish elites looking to exploit people in anyway possible, and the data harvesting is more profitable to them than things like solving these types of problems.
MostAwesomeDan
We've also been doing stuff like this WITHOUT AI for a long time. Projects like Folding@Home, BOINC, the World Community Grid and GIMPS have been using distributed computing to solve massive mathematical and biological problems for at least a decade if not more. And that doesn't include "normal" super computing methods like using CRAY, ASICs, Gravity Pipe, etc.
whiskeywonka
True but all those projects used far more resources. The Cray-1 doesnt even compare to a Pi (about 4x faster). Edu's did beowolf clusters in the 90's and 00's that were less powerful than a pair of 4090's but were world changing at the time. F@H etc are cpu/gpu capable, use far more resources than a dedicated facility, its just distributed and they dont pay for the hardware because people donate it (they do have some of their own)
RetrogradeLlama
Yes, it does have to be that crap stain, because that’s how the Tech Bros will make money. They sort of research is not particularly profitable.
SwiftyGuy
No it doesn’t because there are open models that no one makes real money off of that anyone can use and has nothing to do with “tech bros” making money
DummieThicc
Do you think the people with data centers in their communities who can't afford electricity and are losing their water supply give a fuck about solving math problems?
charondaboatman
Well, I would hope that those people would realize that those data centers are for “for profit” enterprises and not scientific research, as there’s very little financial return on solving old math problems.
whiskeywonka
The setups that solve math problems and do the dns and blood work use around 2 homes worth of electricity and zero water. The issues with the DC you are talking about are not even a thing for the type of setups we were talking about. Not all AI is the same, stop lumping it all as such.
spittleteets
Ai is unethical bc the creators/owners/users are unethical. This is amazing, but if people cannot continue to be taught paid to teach, and work on complex maths, then it's an ill gotten gain.
Elminster
Something a person with a wisdom of about 19 would say.
spittleteets
Ooo edgy
Elminster
But 19 is very high?
spittleteets
Wait, are we talking ab age or level?
Elminster
We are talking in DnD stats.
ipointoutnahtzeesbyreplyingtothem
This. If there's no one who understands the result, what good is it?
spittleteets
Yup! Or know if the result is a correct and valid one!! I forgot where I saw it (probably here) but they gave the best conceptualization, something along the lines of, "ai should be treated like a calculator, a tool to aid us in solving a problem, to take the tedium out of tasks we already know how to do".
ipointoutnahtzeesbyreplyingtothem
And as you shift to simpler and simpler use cases to minimize hallucinations, a smart person starts to think, "Is an LLM actually faster than just writing a script to do this?"
spittleteets
::Gasps in CEO::
"What?!...and pay some dev to build it???"