Crazy take. Whatever justification existed before exists now. Why is generation of proofs justified but not understanding? What's the point of a proof if no one understands?

And anyway a mathematician's lifetime salary is basically nothing. I think total worldwide mathematics budget is less than a tenth of a percent of GDP. Meanwhile, openai cumulative loss stands at tens of billions?

Knowledge is for the machines, you see; we are simply here to tend to their electrons. At least for now.

I guess there is a bit of a realization from the laymen (and I'm speaking as a member of that group) that a lot of these problems are toy problems.

It's clear of Fermat's last theorem. But I figured that the Millennium Prize Problems (of which there are only 10) would have some real spillover into either physics or chemistry.

Yet when one of them gets solved, it seems to be that the argument is, "yeah but not like that".

Imagine if an AI solved cancer, or a vastly cheaper way to get into space, we wouldn't react like that.

I'm going to guess that they have really good predictions, it's just that it doesn't benefit them at all to reveal those to customers.

Because making prediction and being wrong is way worst then not making one.

Plus, imo, they dont know what exactly will happen. There is likely whole bunch of negotiations and replannings going on in background with unsure results.

Why would you guess that? “Prediction is hard, especially when it’s about the future.”

Reading between the lines here, and taking an admittedly very negative view of openai, but they train on user prompts. So if they hear a rumour that someone is about to make a big breakthrough, they have an incentive to scoop by running the model and hoping the solution is in the new training data. Also the statement from the mathematicians in question alleges that they tried to pressure him into academic malpractice. Just appalling timeline we're in, cheers.

I just read that book. Embarrassingly enough, given the context, I got chatgpt (or whatever) to recommend me a list of books based on ones I'd previously enjoyed and that came up. As a mathematician it really sang to me, given the current situation. Bearing the torch forward, I mean.

For those of you that allergic to coy, in-group signaling the passage is from, "A Canticle for Leibowitz"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

Well they brought it upon themselves by making it about being tortured to death etc., instead of the much more reasonable economic and social risks.

Weird side swipe at Marx. Or not so weird I guess. Correct me if I'm wrong but I doubt Marx ever predicted that a workers' uprising would lead to classless utopia. It's clearly a necessary but not sufficient condition.

That just means it's not their top priority.

If you haven't read it already, Fads and Fallacies by Martin Gardner is a great book. A bit more focused on pseudoscience than on cults but Scientology comes up for instance.

I've been saying "ask chatgpt" when I don't think I have anything more useful to add.

Do you believe that 30 to 40 Palestinians per night pose an immediate threat? Elsewhen in history, genocidal acts have been justified by claiming a non existent immediate threat (of disease, of economics, of fifth columnists, of terrorism).