If we ever build an AI that can think and feel, does Optimus’s logic apply to it automatically? Or is Megatron secretly onto something, that freedom has to be earned rather than assumed? And if an LLM ever crossed that line into real sentience, would we even be able to tell?
An LLM came up with a novel solution to the Erdős unit distance problem. It was unsolved for 80 years.
"And, on May 20, OpenAI shared a solution to the unit distance problem, along with a blog post explaining the work and a companion paper that featured nine world-class mathematicians commenting on the correctness of the proof and the importance of what had been done (as well as presenting a streamlined human version of the result). Mathematicians had generally believed that Erdős’ conjecture — about how many evenly spaced points can be placed on a plane — was correct. To general surprise, OpenAI’s internal model found a counterexample. To do so, it had found a sophisticated way to use tools from an area of math called algebraic number theory. As Jacob Tsimerman of the University of Toronto wrote in the companion article, “This is a really impressive piece of work. … It is definitely an intimidating construction.”
I can’t believe I have to keep explaining this to people, lmao
First of all, this is a math equation. Math is what computers do, they are essentially really fucking good calculators.
That math problem hadn’t been solved before, that’s true, however, if you actually read the excerpt you just shared, you’ll see that the equation was solved using preexisting theories and formulas. Ergo, humans had already manufactured every individual piece of the puzzle, and had used them in other contexts that the AI could be fed and then reuse.
Saying that AI came up with the solution isn’t the full story. That’s like saying that AI created a shitty piece of slop art. It did no such thing, it plagiarized a bunch of work from other people and essentially made it into a collage.
When MC Hammer (rather, his producer) sampled Rick James for “Can’t touch this”, did he become the bass player? No, that was still Rick James, they just took his song and altered it to make theirs.