I think a lot about how Terrence Tao and the usual 30 (already well-funded) math guys will receive this cash while us early-career math students are left holding the bag.
It's akin somewhat to "donating 100 dollars to the node JS foundation, not the packages that appear when you run npm fund".
As much as this looks like a math problem, it's actually an everyone problem. Some hands-on (literally) have more way to go, but otherwise this is a "hop" that the entire society needs to cross. Honestly, I don't think there's going to be be any Math 2.0 as there won't be any other 2.0, at least not in any utilitarian way and the effort to find utility where there's none is misguided at best. The analogy I like to make is that with horses trying to find utility y in the Ford era.
It's also not an OpenAI, Anthropic or any specific name caused problem. This type of progress has always been happening, it's more or less coincidental (like Stigler's law). The problem though is we need to rethink how we operate as a society and too few (IMO) are trying to make this conversation happen.
I love how "society" is investing billions to develop a tech that makes its own citizens obsolete, but doesn't manage to provide basic healthcare, housing or infrastructure...
That why our ancestors repurposed their pitchforks. History is marked by a drive towards inequality, punctuated by bouts of war and revolution that trigger a reset.
too few are talking about reshaping society because those in power are not letting that happen. the amount of wealth concentrated at the top is staggering and allows them to fortify their position by bribing, buying governments and media.
Maybe you get conditioned on how the rich usually treats other people, but this view isn't well supported by healthy discussions among the math community wrt recent AI 'disruption'
> > Under a partnership, the Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI will commit $15 million in combined funding and resources.
OAI and Ant got blowback for essentially strip mining mathematical discoveries into PR wins for their models, accidentally laying waste to the research field in process. Throwing ~$5M each into PR whitewashing (partially in token credits), seems self-serving.
Kudos to the Simons Foundation for seizing the moment to offer the labs a fig leaf of respectability. Might have been the fastest "Yes" on a grant proposal ever.
Ironically, that has been that way for most people since forever.
Comparing with the situation in programming, where code evaluation (obviously analogous to "understanding") is that bottleneck now, should get people the idea of being in the same boat.
> Under a partnership, the Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI will commit $15 million in combined funding and resources. The foundation will manage and award the funding, including through an open call for proposals, to support workshops and initiatives that help researchers evaluate recent AI-assisted results, learn and use new tools, share perspectives and shape collective standards for AI use.
The foundation was started in 1994, Wikipedia says "one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 billion in 2022" - Jim Simons founded the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund.
So charitable that it launches this initiative with ClosedAI and Misanthropic. There are probably accelerationist and transhumanist nutcases at this foundation.
Can you ever look behind the surface of ... anything at all? Only naive and childlike statements in favor of AI proponents. It is literally like saying: "Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson are esteemed members of the magnanimous and generous Royal Family."
Wonder if they realize these types of things help grow massive resentment against such companies? I'm astounded by how terrible the politics of SV actually is.
how is that different than what's been happening forever? Mathematics has ALWAYS been a "charity". The only thing that changes over time is who gives the money, first it's the church, then it's princes, then government, it's been corporations for a while, this is nothing new.
In some way, yes. The whole situation seems completely grounded in that mathematicians are greedy for status and clout trying to write their name on new discoveries in blood and publish as many papers as possible. And now they are sad because they lost their way to this status.
When you remove this greed and status seeking you might actually end up with a healthy environment.
I don’t think it’s a matter of greed. I’d say it’s about incentives. In every field, people want to progress. I don’t think mathematicians are any different, even though we try to admire and idealize higher principles and the pursuit of knowledge. If you don’t publish papers under your name, you won’t progress in your career or receive enough support to work at the frontier. It’s just a general observation.
It may be true in some cases but as a blanket condemnation of the entire field it makes no sense. Moreover, I can't fathom how you could reach this conclusion if you've actually done any reading on "the whole situation." The reality is precisely the opposite of what you're claiming.
Mathematicians are upset partly because AI companies are "scooping" their work. If you had worked on something for years and this happened, you'd be upset, too. The manner in which this happened with Navier-Stokes was unconscionable. The mathematicians who did the work deserve recognition. OpenAI deliberately stole it from them.
More importantly, the purpose of mathematics isn't to produce proofs. It's to produce mathematics and mathematicians. Working through problems helps people find new mathematics -- and makes people mathematicians. A machine that generates proofs destroys that. It breaks the cycle that makes mathematics fruitful, interesting, and not just self-regenerative but self-propagating.
AI companies aren't just clear-cutting the fields of math; they're sowing them with salt -- and they're doing this precisely because of greed and hunger for status and the title of "first."
Unhinged and honestly nauseating take. Were you hurt by a mathematician at some point? I don't even know where to begin with how negative and backwards this is. I guess I could start by saying that if you replace "mathematicians" in your comment with literally any other profession you could make the same criticism about greed and clout. With the "writing their names in blood" comment, I have no words. I will weep for the world if it turns out that this is how people see math.
> The whole situation seems completely grounded in that mathematicians are greedy for status and clout trying to write their name on new discoveries in blood and publish as many papers as possible
You're gonna get downvoted but this is absolutely true. People who've never been in real professional academia don't understand but this is exactly what most very successful academics are like.
> When you remove this greed and status seeking you might actually end up with a healthy environment.
Nah I think you're just gonna have collapse because you've removed all incentive.
Aside from the fact that $15M is couch change for these companies, and aside from the fact that this project is hypocritical and self-serving (as explained by many other posts), the whole idea of naming a supposedly large sum of money in a headline in order to impress is just silly. Whether a project is successful or worthwhile has little to do with how much funding may be lined up, and throwing numbers around is often just a smokescreen for poor planning and execution.
Genuinely the least they could do for what a pox they are on so many industries, on consumers of electronics, on local municipalities, on the environment...
And herein lies the rub: As others have pointed out in another active thread on AI in mathematics: The crisis could be described as one of career, status, and funding vs the general concept of the field. We have now circled back to question of who deserves these tokens!
I belive that the world would be in a much better place if all science was ultimately funded by a global organization such as UN and patents did not exist. If you are a research group that successfully creates something worth replicating then you should be eligable to receive a grant as well as request grants for projects that cost billions of dollars.
There is some success with this kind of strategy already when it comes to space, LHS and ITER come to mind. NASA is somewhat operating on this very same principle although it is a government organization to begin with.
Although the opposite reaction is that you should keep people behind inventions poor to encourage them to create more inventions which ultimately what ends up happening in the real world more often than not. The people who revolutioned the world did get fame and glory, including numerous monetary compensation packages - but compared to the people who sold those inventions they only got a tiny fraction of a fraction, this is especially clear with people who are normal employees and inventions are credited to a company rather than the few people who made it possible.
May be instead of funding military or other countries, they can fund scientist.. And all the tax funded must be in public domain instead of giving it to private companies.
It's akin somewhat to "donating 100 dollars to the node JS foundation, not the packages that appear when you run npm fund".
It's also not an OpenAI, Anthropic or any specific name caused problem. This type of progress has always been happening, it's more or less coincidental (like Stigler's law). The problem though is we need to rethink how we operate as a society and too few (IMO) are trying to make this conversation happen.
Essentially gifts for the annointed.
OAI and Ant got blowback for essentially strip mining mathematical discoveries into PR wins for their models, accidentally laying waste to the research field in process. Throwing ~$5M each into PR whitewashing (partially in token credits), seems self-serving.
Kudos to the Simons Foundation for seizing the moment to offer the labs a fig leaf of respectability. Might have been the fastest "Yes" on a grant proposal ever.
It’s like saying the power loom laid waste to the field of textiles.
Ironically, that has been that way for most people since forever.
Comparing with the situation in programming, where code evaluation (obviously analogous to "understanding") is that bottleneck now, should get people the idea of being in the same boat.
The foundation was started in 1994, Wikipedia says "one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 billion in 2022" - Jim Simons founded the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund.
[1] https://www.simonsfoundation.org/news/from-trust-to-verifica...
[2] https://lean-lang.org/fro/
Quanta magazine is the propaganda arm.
On ChatGPT: Settings -> Data controls -> Turn off “Improve model for everyone”
On Claude: Settings -> Privacy -> Turn off “Help improve our AI models”
They can scrape your work after you publish it.
When you remove this greed and status seeking you might actually end up with a healthy environment.
It may be true in some cases but as a blanket condemnation of the entire field it makes no sense. Moreover, I can't fathom how you could reach this conclusion if you've actually done any reading on "the whole situation." The reality is precisely the opposite of what you're claiming.
Mathematicians are upset partly because AI companies are "scooping" their work. If you had worked on something for years and this happened, you'd be upset, too. The manner in which this happened with Navier-Stokes was unconscionable. The mathematicians who did the work deserve recognition. OpenAI deliberately stole it from them.
More importantly, the purpose of mathematics isn't to produce proofs. It's to produce mathematics and mathematicians. Working through problems helps people find new mathematics -- and makes people mathematicians. A machine that generates proofs destroys that. It breaks the cycle that makes mathematics fruitful, interesting, and not just self-regenerative but self-propagating.
AI companies aren't just clear-cutting the fields of math; they're sowing them with salt -- and they're doing this precisely because of greed and hunger for status and the title of "first."
Perhaps to some maths is about progress, like other sciences, rather than self-portrayal
I don’t necessarily disagree but it seems like the AI companies are just as status seeking and infinitely greedier.
You're gonna get downvoted but this is absolutely true. People who've never been in real professional academia don't understand but this is exactly what most very successful academics are like.
> When you remove this greed and status seeking you might actually end up with a healthy environment.
Nah I think you're just gonna have collapse because you've removed all incentive.
Seems that space is really about that
https://ai.google/gemini-for-science/
We will only give the free tokens to the top X% of scientists, which is now a much smaller pool and you are unlikely to be considered LLMs or not.
There is some success with this kind of strategy already when it comes to space, LHS and ITER come to mind. NASA is somewhat operating on this very same principle although it is a government organization to begin with.
Although the opposite reaction is that you should keep people behind inventions poor to encourage them to create more inventions which ultimately what ends up happening in the real world more often than not. The people who revolutioned the world did get fame and glory, including numerous monetary compensation packages - but compared to the people who sold those inventions they only got a tiny fraction of a fraction, this is especially clear with people who are normal employees and inventions are credited to a company rather than the few people who made it possible.
How shameless can you be?