theatlantic.com

A mathematician reads the AI future

artninja1988 · 66 points · 89 comments · 20 時間前 · Open original

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GlibMonkeyDeath19 時間前

I guess as a physicist I am more hopeful - every revolution in how the world is understood (by humans) has been driven by new tools and data. Being able to measure single quanta, for instance, showed us just how weird and counter-intuitive the Universe can be. I think AI might do something similar for mathematics - make connections that a human brain might have missed, and so advance human knowledge. But I totally get the anxiety - it's a real John Henry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)) moment for the mathematics field. Clearly this is going to restructure how mathematicians are going to be trained and how they work.

award_19 時間前

https://archive.is/1g6Jh

chvid19 時間前

Once IBM deep blue beat Kasparov in chess, IBM stopped their chess playing research. The marketing goal, if you will, had been met and IBM would continue their actual money making business of selling mainframes and doing consulting. The same thing will happen with AI companies’ endeavors into abstract maths. Maths however will be changed - students can no longer be taught via the same homework - and mathematicians will have to do more computer work and probably work in larger groups of people.

amelius18 時間前

Hopefully we can put this aside quickly and move on to using AI to solve great scientific/philosophical problems such as the theory of everything and the hard problem of consciousness.

cuttothechase18 時間前

The thing that is so confusing about this is the following fact - Lets say the frontier of some specific problem or a field in math is at x. X was reached over millenia by incremental steps and sometimes to leaps and jumps. Now if AI gives us a x + 1 or x + 10 state, aren't there still x + infinite steps to climb? Many of this the AI can never imagine and won't reach by itself without human assist. Yes, there is a temporary shock and awe because of all the low hanging x + 1 through x+ 1000 fruits for a given sub-domain/problem have been carpet bombed or whatever.. but isn't it turtles all the way!? Won't people soon find something more to develop and solve that takes it further than where it was of this infinite realm of exploration?