Edit: on researching more, I don’t think this is the case; I must have confused them with some other group.
Certainly you are cynical if you think it won't benefit humanity or advance mathematical knowledge.
For thousands of years mathematics had this aura of being at the pinnacle of human thought and was one of the things that separated us from other species. People like Euler, Gauss, Euclid, Hilbert, Erdos had this aura about that them that they were on the noblest of pursuits - trying to solve problems that had no immediate practical use, and largely needed focused thinking over extended periods of time with the occasional spark of creativity.
Then comes along AI, a mass extinction event to the entire field. It turns out LLMs can think for longer without stopping, have better recall and working memory. What we're seeing now is a 5000-year old set of institutions facing an existential threat because they no longer require humans to be the sole source of labor.
I find the closest analogy to be automobiles displacing the horse-carriage industry in the early 1900s. Horses couldn't protest and rapidly went out of a job, but horse-carriage owners and that industry certainly did.
https://ghostsofdc.org/2018/07/16/horse-dealers-claim-automo...
IMO OpenAI's way of publishing also goes against other parts of the general guidelines. Also, I doubt they'll follow point 2B3:
> For each result released, the AI lab should make public the name of the model, the prompts used, a (summarized) chain of thought, the time taken, and the estimated cost of computation. Releasing additional material that sheds light on the scientific process that produced the results, such as the initial LLM outputs before they were cleaned up (as recommended in (1) above), is strongly encouraged.
Gatekeeping much?
"Mathematicians have a particular vision of progress that is informed by history and field-specific considerations."
This cannot seriously have been written by anyone mathematically literate, it's just too embarrassing.
I recall once saying something to a colleague even more cringe-worthy than this. Fear of one's own position and stature can make us (speaking for myself) say things we later regret.
You don't even need to click on the link to predict the Canute-style tone.
The emotional reaction is understandable, but should not guide the rational response.
It's just sour grapes.
A) human displacement B) having to use more AI to check AI outputs
Who wins in both scenario’s? Lol
Related:
“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically
Since when science works like this?
One point I might slightly agree with - refusal to acknowledge work done with nonpublic models. Otoh in other fields and in history it’s been common to do science with resources unavailable to common people.
Bringing up OpenAI's lawsuits is irrelevant to whether these proofs hold. And calling a release that includes Lean formalizations a "demonstration of power" gets it backwards. Machine checkable proofs are the least "trust me" form of mathematics there is.
There are fair criticisms here. Not every result is formalized, the model can't be reproduced by outsiders, and the massive dump strains review capacity. Those are reasons to demand full formalization, open access to the methods, and help funding human review. They aren't reasons to dismiss correct mathematics or to tell people to stop working on hard problems.
with no teeth, stuff like this starts to feel a little funny+sad