"Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?"
It's a fight! I envision myself as Jacob wrestling the angel.
PhD student in math here. Doing LLM math is soulless and takes most of the fun out of solving difficult problems (for the most part - my opinion only, I'm happy to talk to mathematicians who like this kind of work). But ultimately the public funds us to produce and understand as many mathematical results as possible for downstream use (if you ask OpenAI/Anthropic, to cure cancer). In that case it doesn't matter who figures a result whether it be a human, LLM, or dog.
So what are we to do? Follow our duty to the community and the public, which is to produce as many results as possible? Or to follow our duty to ourselves and enjoy and understand what we are doing? To someone like me those things seem to be incorrigably opposed to each other now. At this pint the only option is to quit and find a new domain where human input in problem solving is still necessary.
I would suggest that hardly anyone in the public is asking you to increase efficiency. That is the argument you read on pro-AI VC forums and Reddit.
In other words, it is a made-up argument. I think some mathematicians are either addicted (Feynman disease) or hope to make a breakthrough and somehow get credit. So they use "the public" to justify their habit.
The real public that is not on these forums wants academic freedom and independence from corporations. Both will suffer if you are entering soulless production pipelines.
The “real public” wants math to advance so that we can reap the benefits. We don’t care what tools you are or are not using, grant money will go to whichever group is making more progress.
Eh, mathematicians themselves have started embracing it. Terence Tao talks about how LLMs will be on the frontlines, proving new results and humans will just be there to digest and explain them (if the LLMs don't end up being able to do that as well). It's valuable work but not what I really signed up for.
I suspect that the mathematicians who adapt best to AI will treat it like astronomers treat a telescope, as a source of possibly-interesting data to be analyzed. Maybe it looks like finished output, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready to show.
Don't really see much of a reason to keep going. LLMs basically have the whole mathematical corpus internalized, and can just practice endlessly through RL self play and autoformalization. Don't really see what my role would be in such a process other than passive appreciation and digestion.
yeah, I don't see how people say that but then don't understand that fighting against the system almost never goes well.
I feel like same thing is happening to software. some people saying how they barely use AI, or how you can just do 10-100x more yet nobody seems to know where that demand will come from
But someone can just prove whether its possible to 10x no?
Put out completed projects w.r.t products people are familiar with. E.g. show me that you can put out a scalable clone of IG...? Why don't these examples exist?
Like come on, I would LOVE to see that! The average person doesn't care about pet projects. Show something people are familiar with, and use on a regularly basis, that can be produced in a fraction of the resources.
but so many things we have are black boxes now. do people need to understand how cars work to drive them properly?
And even if you understand how it works, how does it affect your day-to-day function or the advancement of the field? As Apple liked to say, It Just Works (TM).
The difference is that people who make the cars and the mechanics who repair them still understand how that black box works.
Would you be willing to drive one if the engineers at ford were all fired and an almighty agent who kinda did the almost right thing most of the time was designing the black box?
probably not, but my main gripe would be that there would be no way to punish anyone if something went wrong with the car, not (necessarily) that human judgement or expertise is still needed as part of the car design process.
So yes, maybe we will all just exist to get sued at the end of the day.
that probably makes it feel even worse for most people
imagine spending years to develop mastery of something that anyone can do now? For example, sitting your ass down in college, debugging lines of code on a Saturday night while people are out partying? It's fun to do, sure, but there's still a huge opportunity cost.
It's easy to say that such people are prideful, arrogant, only cares about being better than others, but I think such a feeling sucks for 99% of the population that are not siddharthas.
It's debatable depending on who you're talking to whether taste is more "important" than execution/the mechanical part (I think calling it the mechanical part is a little misleading because that suggests one is brainlessly implementing a fixed algorithm). Maybe for the manager/CEO types who have a grand pie in the sky vision that they need an army to implement "taste" is more important. But I think for the artist themselves being able to spawn something into existence with their own labor is a large part of the experience.
Yes, we'll have lots more art for people to enjoy, but fewer artists.
Understanding the underlying implementation can have value even if rarely used. I think learning assembly has had a profound effect on my understanding of higher level code, but there is no /real/ point to learning it with great compilers, pre-ai.
It's just tough to hear a mainstream "impactful" line of work be compared to knitting and sewing. Say what you want but people thought that their work was necessary to the advancement of society, or at least something bigger than themselves. Whether you agree with them or not, reduction of the job to a hobby takes that away from them.
There's also a tension in your comment. Are we prioritizing "advancing society" or programmer feelings? If it's the former, then it doesn't matter if AI is better than humans, whatever moves us forward faster is better. If it's the latter, then we're talking about holding back progress for the sake of a programmer's feelings.
For the record, I'm a lifelong programmer who loves AI because now I can experiment with new ideas at a scale I could not before. I feel zero loss. In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.
I find this comment fascinating for a few reasons. The first is that it has the underlying assumption that all "progress" is good (regardless of what we're progressing towards). From my perspective, it seems like most of the progress being made is towards bringing about a sort of techno-feudalism and environmental collapse. Maybe a little bit less progress would actually benefit humanity?
The second thing revolves around this:
> In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.
This is the complete opposite of my experience. AI seems like the logical conclusion of the business-ifying of tech. Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head.
> From my perspective, it seems like most of the progress being made is towards bringing about a sort of techno-feudalism and environmental collapse. Maybe a little bit less progress would actually benefit humanity?
I'd argue you're conflating two independent axis: technological progress and societal inequality.
AI is useful today and is getting more powerful and efficient. This is obviously great for humanity! It's enabling discoveries that were previously out of reach, and allowing us to accomplish the same amount of work with less effort.
AI is also generating massive amounts of money for the wealthy and powerful and increasing inequality. This is not great for humanity!
I do think it's important to keep in mind that this centralization of power and wealth is not caused by AI directly: the pattern exists whenever there's a desirable but scarce resource. The same argument that AI is increasing inequality can reasonably be made about concrete, steel, and steam engines. The problems caused by AI are really human problems at their core. It's possible AI could even help us fix them! (I'm not at all hopeful.)
LLMs haven't enabled any discoveries that were previously out of reach. If you disagree, name one?
>AI is useful today and is getting more powerful and efficient
No, it's getting less efficient at an exponential rate without proportional performance gains
>do think it's important to keep in mind that this centralization of power and wealth is not caused by AI directly: the pattern exists whenever there's a desirable but scarce resource. The same argument that AI is increasing inequality can reasonably be made about concrete, steel, and steam engines.
The goal of these LLM companies is to funnel all economic activity through their models. LLMs only exist because of how they strip mined human work without consent or compensation. I.e. LLMs do directly cause the centralization of wealth and power by how they were designed and how they are meant to be used.
> LLMs haven't enabled any discoveries that were previously out of reach. If you disagree, name one?
While not an LLM, protein folding is now often done via transformer.
> No, it's getting less efficient at an exponential rate without proportional performance gains
AI is expanding in both directions. Sure, it's eating the world with its compute demand and the bitter lesson bites, but we're also seeing drastically improved efficiencies employed alongside. The cost per task is dropping fast.
> The goal of these LLM companies is to funnel all economic activity through their models.
That's what all companies want, AI or otherwise.
No arguments here on the ethics of AI companies though.
I think progress is inevitable. Sometimes good, sometimes bad (in my perspective). I love AI but I don't like the eco-damage required to power it (not just water/electricity, but rare earth mining and the human rights violations that go with it). I don't think you can go backwards though.
I was just pointing out the logical tension in the comment I was replying to.
> This is the complete opposite of my experience. AI seems like the logical conclusion of the business-ifying of tech. Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head.
I have dozens of extremely nerdy projects going thanks to AI. I wouldn't have had time for any of them because I was too busy making money to spend 100+ extra hours programming my wildest tech fantasies, but now that's possible!
AI also makes it possible to do hardware programming, reverse engineering (when Anthropic isn't censoring itself) and all manner of other geeky pursuits.
Sure, I agree that progress (towards something) is inevitable. But in the dichotomy presented ("progress" vs. "programmers feelings"), I took progress to mean "the things we're currently making progress on [with regards to AI]." Which I would say are largely a wealth concentration machine, and will probably be a net negative for humanity. To more directly respond to the original question of "progress or programmer feelings", I would ask why we can't just do something else entirely?
I'm genuinely happy that you're having fun with it. I can't get over the feeling that _I'm not building anything._ To me, it seems like hopping on an IRC channel and copy-pasting code from a greybeard instead of writing it myself. I just don't find that satisfying at all.
You clearly don't care about the eco-damage or else you wouldn't be using Big Tech's LLMs lol.
And let's not kid ourselves, you aren't programming anything. You are paying Anthropic to brute force the code for you with their supercomputer which was only built thanks to the rare earth mining and human rights violations you claim to be bothered about.
I'm just saying that before programmer feelings used to be loosely aligned with advancing society: fun work (for some people) was useful work. Now that's starting to be decoupled and it sucks when your choices are hate your job and contribute or do fun stuff and don't contribute. Granted this is the dilemma most people have faced, but for people who like their work as it is right now it sucks.
I'm a programmer and I'm having more fun than ever thanks to AI. I do think a lot of programmers are pretty conservative by nature, so maybe that's the group that's struggling more. If I had to wager, I think the camp is split between those who spent a long time in university vs self-taught hacker types (I'm the latter).
I'll take open models any day of the week. We're almost there but they're not quite good enough yet. Re: fun, don't you have a backlog of incredibly weird experiments and projects you'd like to build? I did and now I'm building them, it's very fun (and educational).
The people who spent a long time in university are actually better off than the self taught hacker types and this has mostly to do with the fact that so many people go through university without learning how to program.
University is not easy, so how did they skip the easy part? How did they get good enough grades everywhere else to pass?
Turns out: They must have done something that has nothing to do with programming but it is still computer science. What was it? What did they learn???
> Granted this is the dilemma most people have faced
I don't agree. There are many creative and useful fields: engineering, law, finance. And others that don't require as much creativity but may be enjoyable due to social factors: medicine, teaching, emergency services.
The dilemma that people have faced is that they don't want to do earnest work, but still need money to live. There are enough types of work that are useful and stimulating in different ways that everyone should be able to find one, so long as they are given opportunities as children (we do a decent job of this in the developed world). At least, that was the contract. Many fields, not just software, are facing existential crises.
I guess when I said what you quoted, I meant for most people (developed and developing world) throughout history, or at least as long as "work" has existed.
ok and? both are allowed to suck? most people have lived for 10s of years not 10s of thousands of years so it's not like that "ancestral memory" matters anyways.
Programming is the art of automation, and is being taken to new levels. It'd be quite damming to the field if a substantial % of the world's output over many decade hadn't brought us here, tbh.
Were builders crying when the Hagia Sophia was built? Projects come and go, nothing is forever.
interstingly i think what you are talking about is pretty apt, but not the way you are framing it. knitting and sewing were impactful things in their time; clothing has been something humans need for a long time and more skilled craftsmen were able to produce hgiher quality garments. new techniques increased durability, wearability, comfort, etc. machines commoditized that and made it mich faster to produce garments, so turned these into hobbies and the odd artisan fpcused and made new improvements, but not as often as before.
programming will likely be the same. fewer people who care to be craftsmen, more hobbyist, a few artisans who really dig deep and make new patterns (we still dont see AI sampling out of distribution).
>reduction of the job to a hobby takes that away from them.
this is your personal feeling. they never had anything in the first place, just that the market was valuing a certain skill for what it could output. the perspective you are posting is purely a construct.
Sure it is a construct (it's how I feel at least).
I didn't mean to say sewing and knitting weren't impactful - on the contrary, they are analogous to programming: they were impactful but now they're basically hobbies. Maybe there are more developments left in the clothing making process - not sure.
I think you're undervaluing the skill and technology behind clothing, as well as the impact of clothing. But that's probably a reflection of how technology has allowed us to take it for granted.
for sure but the point is that sewing isn't really necessary anymore. if all the knitters disappeared tomorrow, the majority of society wouldn't feel it . If (say a few years ago) all SWEs disappeared, that would be a problem for a lot of people. The feeling of impactfulness is gone when things are reduced to a hobby.
it's like how I can still get a typewriter and use it for the experience, or like how I could write ORM scaffolding by hand or just let the code gen write it, I see AI as nothing more than a keyboard extension, the amount of freedom you give it depends on the instruction/prompt
Wouldn't people who thought programming was fun be even more upset that they can't do it (a certain way they used to) as a job anymore? That they were never working a day in their life before and now have to work every day?
Yes. This is much closer to how many people are experiencing it and why the OP's suggestion of letting people practice it as an unpaid hobby doesn't address their issue.
It feels like spending your teens practicing football, playing varsity level in high school, getting really good at the college level, finally recruited into the NFL as a pro football player (dream came true!!) and suddenly, the team owner says, "No more football playing for you. You get the same salary but you're managing robots who play the football. Deal with it."
Computers can destroy Magnus. Yet he still plays and nobody gets to tell him or anyone else they have to stop.
If people stop being interested in human-played chess, then yes he's out of luck. But that could happen with or without computers. Same for football and anything else.
Of course the analogy works. It’s an analogy, not an exact duplicate of the situation.
The important parallels of the analogy are that:
* Magnus dedicated his whole life to chess, just as many programmers have done with programming.
* Magnus enjoys the craft of chess, the human elements of creativity and cleverness, just as many artisan programmers do.
* Both prefer to be hands on and don’t enjoy being relegated to managerial / supervisory roles, and would probably move on to something else if they could no longer do the part they love.
* Many outsiders do not have any idea how much time and dedication it takes to reach the upper echelons of a skill like that, and struggle to empathize with those who have done so, and perhaps even feel Schadenfreude to see these folks “taken down a peg.”
Mathematicians have recently been lumped into this category of knowledge workers at risk. Many are grieving gratuitously and suffering a lot of flippancy from Schadenfreude-feeling onlookers.
No, it doesn't work, because both analogies (basketball and chess) are entertainment/games. Magnus isn't being paid to produce the best possible chess moves, he's being paid to be the best human chess player and beat other humans. A basketball player is similar. So the act of playing chess, and the act of playing basketball, is what provides the (entertainment) value.
A computer programmer, on the other hand, is paid to produce something. They aren't entertaining anyone (except themselves). The act of producing code doesn't matter to the person that wants a binary. The binary is what matters. So if a computer can out-program a human, then the human is in trouble. So it's different.
But, nothing is stopping a human from programming for entertainment purposes. And nothing is stopping humans from being entertained by watching other humans program, maybe competitively. Like chess, or basketball. Or from getting together and solving programming problems. Then it doesn't matter that a computer can run circles around them, and nobody can tell them to stop doing it.
I get it, though. Younger people in tech should be worried.
We've commoditized programming because it often gives an output that can lead to many beneficial things. But that does not mean that programming itself isn't entertainment.
Making art is often considered entertainment, and it can also be commoditized. The difference between entertainment and work is often thin, dictated by personal enjoyment, not how one is paid. I can be paid for something I find very entertaining. I can also be paid for something I find dull.
If the thing I find entertaining disappears, it's reasonable for me to feel grief. For something I enjoyed is no longer available to me, at least not in full.
There's a community around programming, much like chess and basketball. Seeing that community deteriorate into solely programming for profit, and using AI to do so, is tragic. Programming has been very focused on profit for a long time, but now even those who think it fun are debating on whether or not to offload their work to a machine that does all the work for them.
The “entertainment value to the customer” is the product being produced by the professional game player. That’s what the team owners pay them for. I don’t see much of a difference. The programmer is being paid to use his skill at programming to create business value. The sportsball player is being paid to use his sports skill to create business value.
This is not what I said and you're being rude. I'm saying that I don't understand the grief being expressed for the loss of a hobby. Because as I explained, computers can't invalidate hobbies.
> Sounds like I got suckered into arguing with an AI yet again.
Nope. I'm a human and didn't use AI for anything I wrote. But thanks?
Speaking for myself. Not really. The problem that I had with enjoying programming was that many of my coworkers who didn't enjoy programming have some opinions that were frustrating to need to entertain.
Now all I have to do is make sure they're not peddling an actively bad idea and if not I can just tell the bot to incorporate their dubious ideas.
In the past it was all, I'm not familiar with this construct that solves our problem perfectly, why don't we cludge adapter pattern in here again.
If they haven't worked a day in their life before, then who has built all the software products we use today and from which LLMs are endlessly benefitting?
No you're right - I guess I meant moreso that you seemed to be expressing incredulity that people live this way. It's natural to identify with something you spend the majority of your day doing (especially if you like it or perhaps have stockholm'd yourself into liking it)
well, this is what happens as people move up the needs later (as ted kaczynski said) - they turn to other activities outside of basic survival for fulfillment.
And of course in a society based on protestant capitalism, it's clear why work and happiness and work are so strongly coupled. I'm sure things are different in most of europe.
But again, academia and math are things people only do because they really love doing them and can't imagine doing anything else all day.
"Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?"
It's a fight! I envision myself as Jacob wrestling the angel.
reply