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I don't understand any of the math here, but I had two thoughts. Soon we'll have explainer agents that translate these according to my level so I can, with effo

I don't understand any of the math here, but I had two thoughts. Soon we'll have explainer agents that translate these according to my level so I can, with effort and interest, follow along and stretch my understanding boundary bit by bit. Two, at some point AIs will be able to use other context like the fact that this is Terrence Tao and not your average Joe and change how it answers, either in tone or structure.

colordrops 2mo ago
I'm not sure an AI will speed things up much. You would probably still need years of layers of foundational understanding to get the advanced material. We don't go through years of school to learn math just because teachers are bad - it's because complex subtle ideas are built on countless other ideas, and aren't necessarily compressible to something every layman can understand.
- OJFord 2mo ago
  The years are broad though, the nice thing with AI explanations is that they can go deep quickly, and quite precisely down the path you need for your prior experience.
  - colordrops 2mo ago
    Oh for sure, I'm not denying the value of AI as a teacher, just saying that it's not going to speed things up much over a quality personal teacher/tutor.
    - buzzin_ 2mo ago
      Oh, but it will. Especially in math you depend on definitions and concepts defined earlier, and if you fall behind, perhaps in a class setting, it is hard to catch up, without having somebody who can explain it to you. But, now, with world class knowledge possessing tutor, you can ask for an explanation of missed concepts, even embarrassingly stupid questions you would never ask a person.
  - chongli 2mo ago
    It's not a path, it's a tree, and a downward-facing one at that. To understand the root, you have to understand all of the leaves first, and all of the nodes above them, all the way up. Most people, if they haven't studied mathematics in university, would need to learn hundreds of concepts just to get to the leaves of the tree, and many of these concepts are truly difficult to understand, requiring weeks of study and practice.
brotchie 2mo ago
GPT 5.6 already is an explainer agent. Fork Tao’s convo and prompt this (with your own math level described). GPT did a great job of translating Tao’s questions and concepts (e.g. “pre image”) into a progression I could understand. “Ok I have a PhD in financial math and undergrad in engineering math. I have almost zero knowledge of polynomial algebra / geometry, I know what a polynomial is and what roots are but not much beyond that. Could you try and explain to my level what questions the user I the conversation has asked and what the agent has responded with, we can probably go user query by user query to build up”
- thechao 2mo ago
  I want to be able to take a conversation and ask for subconversations as red pen annotations "on the side". The linear nature of the context tends to frustrate this.
  - charcircuit 2mo ago
    There are already browser extensions similar to this.
- ValentineC 2mo ago
  One thing I've repeatedly told people is that chatbots are often the most patient teachers we'll ever get (especially when explaining "stupid" questions) — compared to what we've encountered on StackOverflow or Reddit.
  - epolanski 2mo ago
    They lack the empathy to understand where and why you're struggling. I've given private math lessons and seen students struggle with ai, even though ai gave the right answers. My intuition is that humans spot xy problems easier when teaching (user ask x but really needs y), whereas llms will oblige writing about x.
    - monk_grilla 2mo ago
chongli 2mo ago
Soon we'll have explainer agents that translate these according to my level so I can, with effort and interest, follow along and stretch my understanding boundary bit by bit. That's not going to happen. Mathematics isn't just unfamiliar, it's truly difficult to understand. You have to put in a lot of work to understand each concept and the concepts build upon each other to form a vast tower of abstractions that has been growing for thousands of years. Just as there is no royal road to geometry, there is no elevator to the top of the tower.

colordrops 2mo ago

I'm not sure an AI will speed things up much. You would probably still need years of layers of foundational understanding to get the advanced material. We don't go through years of school to learn math just because teachers are bad - it's because complex subtle ideas are built on countless other ideas, and aren't necessarily compressible to something every layman can understand.

OJFord 2mo ago
The years are broad though, the nice thing with AI explanations is that they can go deep quickly, and quite precisely down the path you need for your prior experience.
- colordrops 2mo ago
  Oh for sure, I'm not denying the value of AI as a teacher, just saying that it's not going to speed things up much over a quality personal teacher/tutor.
  - buzzin_ 2mo ago
    Oh, but it will. Especially in math you depend on definitions and concepts defined earlier, and if you fall behind, perhaps in a class setting, it is hard to catch up, without having somebody who can explain it to you. But, now, with world class knowledge possessing tutor, you can ask for an explanation of missed concepts, even embarrassingly stupid questions you would never ask a person.
- chongli 2mo ago
  It's not a path, it's a tree, and a downward-facing one at that. To understand the root, you have to understand all of the leaves first, and all of the nodes above them, all the way up. Most people, if they haven't studied mathematics in university, would need to learn hundreds of concepts just to get to the leaves of the tree, and many of these concepts are truly difficult to understand, requiring weeks of study and practice.

brotchie 2mo ago

GPT 5.6 already is an explainer agent. Fork Tao’s convo and prompt this (with your own math level described). GPT did a great job of translating Tao’s questions and concepts (e.g. “pre image”) into a progression I could understand. “Ok I have a PhD in financial math and undergrad in engineering math. I have almost zero knowledge of polynomial algebra / geometry, I know what a polynomial is and what roots are but not much beyond that. Could you try and explain to my level what questions the user I the conversation has asked and what the agent has responded with, we can probably go user query by user query to build up”

thechao 2mo ago
I want to be able to take a conversation and ask for subconversations as red pen annotations "on the side". The linear nature of the context tends to frustrate this.
- charcircuit 2mo ago
  There are already browser extensions similar to this.
ValentineC 2mo ago
One thing I've repeatedly told people is that chatbots are often the most patient teachers we'll ever get (especially when explaining "stupid" questions) — compared to what we've encountered on StackOverflow or Reddit.
- epolanski 2mo ago
  They lack the empathy to understand where and why you're struggling. I've given private math lessons and seen students struggle with ai, even though ai gave the right answers. My intuition is that humans spot xy problems easier when teaching (user ask x but really needs y), whereas llms will oblige writing about x.
  - monk_grilla 2mo ago

chongli 2mo ago

Soon we'll have explainer agents that translate these according to my level so I can, with effort and interest, follow along and stretch my understanding boundary bit by bit. That's not going to happen. Mathematics isn't just unfamiliar, it's truly difficult to understand. You have to put in a lot of work to understand each concept and the concepts build upon each other to form a vast tower of abstractions that has been growing for thousands of years. Just as there is no royal road to geometry, there is no elevator to the top of the tower.