AI · Takes

Recent advancements in AI proof generation has reminded me of my experience that mathematics can be thought of as this giant interconnected codebase. Many elementary theorems can be proven without any deep understanding at all, by simply stitching basic facts (properties, definitions, etc.) together. This is how I got somewhat good at my undergraduate functional analysis class: I just saw the design patterns of its "codebase" in my head.

L@lilianedwards.bsky.social7 Oct 23:20 UTC

Excellent if depressing piece from Tech Policy Press showing our new(ish) AI minister (a) doesn’t know how much compute capacity we have (b) doesn’t understand UK copyright law(c)has totally swallowed the industryKoolAid re existential risk (like, duh). If you want sense, try the House of Lords.

H@hrefna@hachyderm.io7 Oct 17:56 UTC

I generally have found that vert.x is a problem for LLMs writing code in a way that frameworks like Pekko are not. This is because, in large part, that LLMs struggle with managing or expecting "spooky action at a distance" and there is one too many layers of abstraction in how that action at a distance works with Vert.x You can see this exemplified in how the event bus works. You pass an object onto an event bus with a string key. This becomes an untyped object over the wire before being reserialized on the other side.

P@philippeserhal.com8 Oct 00:36 UTC

I am continually blown away by the quality of speech-to-text these days and how LLMs can pick up the pieces when it goes wrong.

C@ccppurcell@mathstodon.xyz7 Oct 12:43 UTC

When I'm thinking about AI in mathematics I end up thinking about the moon landings. It's not a perfect analogy. But there are some parallels. We tend to look back at them as a somewhat collective achievement of humanity; we're right to, I think. But the concentration of wealth in one place due to an arms race is what got us over the line. LLMs don't just stand on the shoulders of human mathematicians, they sort of *are* a distillation of everything we've written. And right now the AI industry is in a massive PR war.

T@troed@masto.sangberg.se8 Oct 07:37 UTC

~15 years ago I was active in the transhumanist* movement and went to conferences like the Singularity Summit. IIRC the tentative date we bounced around for when we would see rapid technological self-improvement was ~2038. I think we have just entered the first phase of the Singularity since a few weeks back. The LLMs are now capable of advances in maths and software development that can be used to make them even more capable. Rinse and repeat. This is a good thing. It is what will give us a "Star Trek future". *) NOT the silicon valley broligarch style. They weren't even hangarounds to the discussions back then and those I know are appalled at how they've shaped popular discourse on the subject since

F@fuzzy@beige.party7 Oct 06:08 UTC

"The court did not create a special copyright rule for AI, nor did it hold that AI training is inherently infringing. Its approach was more orthodox. The court applied §§ 102 and 107 to the particular material ROSS copied, the purpose for which it was used, the alternatives available and the commercial markets placed at risk. …" <technologylaw.ai/i/218535593/t…> – from 'The Illegality of AI Training and the Limits of Fair Use in Copyright (Thomson Reuters v ROSS Intelligence)'. Also: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH v. Ross Intelligence Inc. - Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center <fairuse.stanford.edu/case/thom…> For my own entertainment, I tested a gross oversimplification: "AI good. Ross bad." – <claude.ai/share/019d62af-a4cd-…>. End result, for a four-year-old: Ross copied. Not allowed. It's not all bad. I get a rhyming hashtag phrase: #AI #law #ELI4

M@midatlantica.com7 Oct 20:14 UTC

The legal system is one place where AI is seeing some real FAFO outcomes. This display was ghoulish and manipulative and I’m glad it’s getting struck down so authoritatively

G@graay.bsky.social7 Oct 15:53 UTC

Thinking about this vs the OpenAI recently released proof sets, the aim becomes clear: the cognitively offloaded masses no longer get access to math. Make *all* math pay to play.

O@owlerine.bsky.social8 Oct 08:14 UTC

In the UK a woman who had fled forced child marriage and severe violence, had her asylum claim rejected, the refusal letter appeared to be AI-generated with AI hallucinated references. Imagine this with no recourse. These are potentially life or death situations.

S@samarkandembers.bsky.social7 Oct 23:59 UTC

AI is: -obviously highly functional, will probably automate a lot of white collar work over the next half decade -massively financially overleveraged as an industry -poorly run as an industry -mostly not doing stochastic-parroting, even at the time that paper came out

W@willthompson.bsky.social8 Oct 01:52 UTC

Watching people try to make sense of the OpenAI proofs today makes this beautiful piece of flash sci-fi by Ted Chiang "Catching crumbs from the table" depressingly no longer science fiction. gwern.net/doc/fiction/...

T@thomaswilburn@hachyderm.io7 Oct 16:08 UTC

In many ways, "you can just prompt your way to a game" is an encapsulation of what's wrong with LLM thinking. Making bad games that never went anywhere is what got me to learn trigonometry, to get comfortable with LERPing and easing, to think about how I organize code. It put me in contact with open source communities when I was way too young to be there. It gave me an actual career and made me a better person. At the end of the day the game is not the point.

G@geekalogian.bsky.social7 Oct 12:53 UTC

Were there a constructed mind that bore the complexity and moral responsibility of a human soul, that would be a fascinating theological consideration. Regardless, my interpretation of faith-based ethics and morality hinges on the effects on existing created beings--AI is doing PRETTY BAD there.

R@robotpony@mas.to8 Oct 02:31 UTC

The copyright problems with training LLMs feels a bit like the sampling craze in the 1990s. Queen and David Bowie vs. Vanilla Ice, for example. New tech → novel uses → no laws for fair use in that context → new laws are drafted. At a human level, knowledge should be free. The way that LLMs represent knowledge isn't specific to the work. Yet, even given this, there is an ethical prickle when using published content. I'm sure we'll figure it out, but it's not the controversy what we make it out to be, it's just a step in the evolution of humankind.