Three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics

Scott Aaronson of Shtel Optimzed and now at OpenAI has a great podcast episode discussing this -worth watching

https://youtu.be/3yXtXTwz4J4?si=mmePkdRBQrlO3BlD

Honestly, I’m a bit scared but also a bit excited.

I’m currently reading Africa by John Reader which covers a lot of humanity storyline. From HN I get the humanity achievements that are happening right now.

The feeling digesting both daily is in order of magnitudes bigger than what any really exciting tv show did to me.

I honestly at this point don’t know anything about what could be possible and what couldnt.

I understand that this is really freightening, but also especially ETH being false gives even more hope that some fundamental problems could be solved in our lifetime, for example understanding universe, aging, colonization of planets and also our limits. I know I’m the minority, but these answers really interest me.

Someone should take the sub-exponential proof & write something executable.

> In our view, these manuscripts are best understood as a form of raw research data. To convert this raw research data into scientific understanding, in this release we are experimenting with a new approach

Mathematics and computer science are turning into an empirical science

Billy Connolly quote: Aye, did yer

Dont even care anymore. Its an AI discovery.

If it's human, at this point, we will see it in the title

I'm too dumb for this.. but does this mean PKI is doomed?

Could these same questions have been solved if mathematicians had most of the GPU and memory in the world accessible to them via another interface?

OpenAi needs to stop trying to please everyone. Just release the findings and give all the credit to your models/collaborators.

I wonder how many prompts for proof approaches they stole for these. Nothing on how many tokens were burned.

Proud to funnel money through the Simons Foundation, which is an AI booster itself and completely aligned with OpenAI.

They make it very hard to enjoy a single result with the business and the politics being so dirty.

"In our view, these manuscripts are best understood as a form of raw research data."

They are staying on top of the exact formulations that spread like memes. I think this one was unfortunate. It's an analogy for a new type of thing that stops attempts to figure out what thing that is.

That said, uh, let's go? Let's see if OpenAI earns some goodwill here. It probably can't go worse than the last math drop!

Another nail in the P not equal NP theory, imagine if AI ends up destroying encrypting lol

Working with academic communities lol.

I looked over the announcement for any substantial contribution, and found they're donating $5 million to a research foundation.

$5 million might sustain 5-10 PhD students for 5 years.

Maybe it's just me but I think they should contribute more in exchange for forcing the scientific community into paying for tokens to generate slop and then pouring their time into verifying or falsifying the slop.

In my opinion its okay for them to work on science and math problems and release the results.

I'm going to be the cynical one and offer this translation: "Our results are too important to wait for the pesky peer review, so we are dumping a whole ton of money in a fund and giving some elites a breathless first look so our buzz keeps getting jacked up."

The reality that Science is a grind and there are thousands of new results every year discovered by regular humans who use a regular human process to cross-check and review.

Treating every result from the AI like a gift from god is getting tiring.

What a fucking time to be alive. I love it.

Terrible title. I was hoping to see more interesting comments on the story, haha!

Where are the papers???

To give some context:

Kakeya / local smoothing (math): The result would resolve the Kakeya conjecture and Stein’s restriction conjecture across all dimensions together. Mathematicians had been making progress one dimension at a time, so this would settle a whole family of central harmonic analysis problems at once.

ETH is false (computer science): ETH has been used as a computational hardness premise in hundreds of papers, so a disproof would undercut a large body of existing complexity results. It would also change what researchers think is achievable for efficient computation.

QCD existence (physics): It would give a rigorous mathematical foundation to the theory of the strong force, which physicists have used for decades without proving it’s well-defined. It also bears on a Millennium Prize Problem.

Title is no doubt crafted to get ahead of the usual online backlash, but here’s the actual announcement:

> We are announcing three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics about harmonic analysis, complexity theory, and quantum field theory.

1. Local smoothing and the Kakeya conjecture

2. The Exponential Time Hypothesis is false

3. Existence of quantum chromodynamics and completions of the Standard Model

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AI is becoming incredibly skilled at tackling problems that once required extensive computing and complex calculations. That said, it seems the community has concerns about their passion and purpose, as these tasks used to define careers and take significant time. Now, with machines handling it all, the role of scientists and mathematicians feels uncertain. Even great minds are feeling discouraged, raising the question of whether this is truly a win for mankind—and at what cost.

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In the Star Trek Voyager capstone episodes titled "Scorpion" parts 1 & 2, Chakotay explains to Janeway the behavior of the Borg through the parable of the fox and the scorpion making a transactional deal to cross the river together. After reaching the shore, the scorpion stings the fox, and the dying fox asks why. The scorpion replies, "Because it is in my nature."

(Upside of the story is Captain Janeway's trusted crew works together to formulate a trick up their sleeve precisely in case of predicted contingency...)

"Working with PR to make us look less like cheating mind leeches".

Science is getting out of the reach of the majority of people. In particular, EU is out of it mostly.

>>> We reached out to external experts and asked them to act as shepherds

Sure, if you meet some resistance to your method of undermining a field, the best go-around is to co-opt the top professionals to help pull the ladder up. Astonishing, the arrogance of whoever didn't bother with this before.