Sure. That’s fine. But I think you still misunderstand exactly what is being solved in most of those cases. It’s not about quantity. If it was then all mathematicians would be spending time on filling “gaps”. Mathematicians aren’t focused on filling in gaps as a lot of the time that type of brute force work is not meaningful to the field of mathematics. They are focused on proving (or disproving) axioms that are foundational to the field. AI has not proven or disproven any mathematical axiom.

The biggest proof it’s ever provided was for “Erdos Problem”. Which is essentially just a fun “dot placement optimization problem” that Erdos came up with, was never taken too seriously, and was difficult enough that spending time on it in academics would likely get you laughed at.

It’s formal proof yields almost nothing to the field.

On top of that, it was “solved” by an AI math startup with closed source software. There is literally no confirmation that it was AI solving it organically or if the mathematicians themselves solved it during developing the AI and saw a means of getting headlines and more capital investment.

Please, be more skeptical. I double majored in Math and CS and have worked in the field for over a decade. There are applications for AI that are helpful. But, right now, people are falling for a lot of the hype and lies that are being pushed around to attract capital investment. You’re not an investor, you can be smarter and more skeptical than that.

In a decade we’re going to have a lot of reflection on this time and the lies being told about the usefulness of AI.

We live in a world where one of the most valued companies in the world pretends it’s AI robots are real and not just being remote operated by a human. You think AI startups aren’t giving credit to AI for the work of humans? They all are. Because it gets them investment.

A mostly fun and non helpful math problem gets solved by a human. The math community enjoys it. Laughs a little at the guy who spent too much of his life solving it. And no one outside the community hears about it.

But if you say “AI did it”. You get millions of dollars in investment.

I don’t have evidence a human solved it. But they also don’t have evidence AI solved it either. And all financial incentives right now are in saying “AI did it”. That is why you should be extremely skeptical of all these things you hear about the capability of AI.

Yeah, that’s not true. The math proofs it has solved are not “more difficult than any solved by a living person”. Many of the proofs AI has solved are corner case conditions that are not being actively worked on by mathematicians. In a trivial example. Image a problem like:

x = n + 25

AI says, hey, let’s assume n=3.

AI solved the proof that 3 + 25 = 28.

Then we get an article posted about how AI solved the impossible problem of n + 25

Now, it can be helpful to have these less general proofs solved. It can help mathematicians in creating a more general proof (what they are usually focused on).

But, as far as I’m aware, these are most of the contributions of AI so far in the field of mathematics. You’re falling for the hype around it. It’s mostly filling in gaps for corner cases that are not actively being worked on.

Which makes sense. Because it’s just a text generation algorithm that predicts the most likely characters. It’s using training data for the n = 3 case that it learned from another already solved problem and then injecting it into the unsolved problem. Sometimes is spits out something that makes sense, a human being has to verify it, and then a corner case for mathematical proof is “solved”.

It’s not capable of thinking or rationalizing to anything new. It is filling in gaps in a field of research that is not primarily focused on “gap filling”.

It’s why it’s “having success” in Math but not Physics. Mathematicians focus on general proofs that apply under all conditions. So, the field inevitably has a lot of problems that could be solved by a lot of brute force for specific conditions.

In Physics, scientist are constantly trying to “fill gaps”. They work with real world measurements and observations. Any new “gap” is constantly being tested. AI has no gaps to fill with its brute force way of “thinking”. And it’s completely incapable of coming up with theories or hypothesis on a level a human does.

This is why it’s not solving ground breaking mathematics proofs and why it is mostly useless in replacing humans in the scientific process. Because it isn’t actually thinking.

Sorry, rant. But this is something that bothers me and you hit a nerve.

Not at all. AI is primarily a tool for domestic surveillance and war. AI cannot produce surplus value to be extracted for profit. They aren’t trying to replace workers with AI. At least not in the long term.

Cool. You can “say that”. But that doesn’t happen. People have kids.

Come up with one idea or policy that actually results in people having less children? Because that’s what the comment you replied to is saying. They are talking about the inevitable policies that come from the “just have less” ideas.

The idea is pointless if it just lives in your head. Would be great if everyone that read this comment gave me $1. But no one’s gonna do that unless I actually had a reason for them to. The reasons to place on people to have less children either don’t work or are human rights violations.

You sound like the dumb “smart guy” that says “we could have world peace if everyone just smoked weed everyday”.

You don’t solve something by coming up with a solution with no means of reaching it. Hell, it’s not really a solution, it’s just a conclusion. It’s why the “population problem” is so good for propaganda. It redirects the problem and distracts stupid people that haven’t actually thought through how that would work.

Not with capitalism. Look at countries that do not take in many immigrants. South Korea and Japan are the results of what you’re talking about.

It’s not just about industrialization. The exploitation of labor under capitalism still requires bodies to build its alter. The contradictions of capitalism are the primary problem. Value comes from labor. The profits of capital come from labor. They don’t want “less people”. They just want you to hate other workers and see them as “the problem”.