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Here's the thing. I read the letter. I'm considering it on its merits. And it has very little. They made great arguments for why it's a good thing that the math

by stbede 20d ago

Here's the thing. I read the letter. I'm considering it on its merits. And it has very little. They made great arguments for why it's a good thing that the mathematical community operates the way they do. They could have made a good argument for why practitioners within the mathematical community shouldn't be seduced by the power of AI and should continue to build mathematics they way they do now. Ignoring AI as a tool, but perhaps not ignoring the results coming out of it, builds understanding and skill and develops humans. I'd be all for a letter that calls on humanity to not give up their humanity to AI tools. To not become lazy and overly dependent on them. The letter makes no arguments why AI companies proving a bunch of results quickly at all affects the ability of mathematicians to do what they want to do. It's just a giant self-congratulatory list of all the wonderful things the mathematical community does and notes that AI companies aren't doing the same thing. It's not enough for them that they are still free to pursue all the goals they outline in that letter to their hearts content. They want to make sure everyone else doing mathematics also sets aside their own goals and pursue theirs. I distrust AI as a technology regardless of alignment. And I've learned to just not use them and focus on the things in my life that matter to me. It turns out that I'm still free to pursue the things in my life that are meaningful regardless of the existence of LLMs.

rramadass 20d ago
Your comment is both clueless and disingenuous. As i have mentioned in my other comments here; The communique from the mathematicians when shorn of polite language is blunt viz. AI companies are stealing our hard-won lifelong research findings, which we were already sharing freely, without attribution/credit and building upon them without informed consent nor compensation. It should now be clear that the AI companies behaviour i.e. backstabbing the mathematicians and stealing their life's work is the problem and not the usage of AI itself. I also pointed you to Self-Determination Theory(SDT) to understand Intrinsic/Extrinsic Motivations that drives Mathematicians (and also Scientists/Researchers/Knowledge-workers) to spend their entire lives in the pursuit of knowledge. From SDT it can be seen that the AI companies behaviour, threatens everybody's Autonomy, nullifies their Mastery/Competence and robs them of Purpose/Relatedness/Belongingness. Nobody should accept this.
- stbede 20d ago
  That far from charitable. My arguement is: A) According to the letter, mathematicians most value: - mathematicians developing their mastery - developing mathematics that provides insights and can be eventually synthesized down conceptually to textbook theories - caring for students and fostering their growth - human mathematicians getting credit for doing important work - etc. B) According to the letter, AI labs aren't trying to do any of these. Conclusion) The result is that AI is not competing with them in their goals of - mathematicians developing their mastery - developing mathematics that provides insights and can be eventually synthesized down conceptually to textbook theories - caring for students and fostering their growth - human mathematicians getting credit for doing important work - etc. The upshot is that mathematicians still have autonomy to pursue those goals, develop mastery at achieving those goals, and remain part of a community of others pursuing them. The only mathematician who loses these sources of motivation is the one who embraces the use of AI and personally abandons those goals. The real crisis will come if AI does try to align itself with the goals of the mathematical community and if AI turns out to be better at developing insight, training students, writing comprehensible textbooks, etc. Then the top mathematicians will truly provide little value to their community.
  - rramadass 19d ago
    You have conveniently left out the spirit of the mathematicians communique and are only trying to argue its letter which is what makes me think you are being disingenuously clueless or cluelessly disingenuous. To repeat myself again, the crux of the problem is; AI companies are stealing our hard-won lifelong research findings, which we were already sharing freely, without attribution/credit and building upon them without informed consent nor compensation. The AI companies are robbing the mathematicians by not involving them in major decisions about solving the leading/promising research problems in their domain. They are the ones who have identified the problems, its importance, promising approaches of attack etc. which have all been freely shared and which the AI companies have used to build their models. For example, in the Navier-Stokes case, OpenAI could have easily informed the mathematicians like so, "hey, your research approach looks promising, do you have any objections to us using your research in our models and throwing a lot of compute resources at it so that we can finally solve it?" Every mathematician would have jumped at the chance since that is what he was doing anyway but at a small scale and far slower pace. Instead OpenAI went behind the mathematicians back while building upon his and others work without attribution/credit nor compensation. This is plagiarism, cheating and despicable behaviour and should not be tolerated by anybody.

by stbede 20d ago

rramadass 20d ago

Your comment is both clueless and disingenuous. As i have mentioned in my other comments here; The communique from the mathematicians when shorn of polite language is blunt viz. AI companies are stealing our hard-won lifelong research findings, which we were already sharing freely, without attribution/credit and building upon them without informed consent nor compensation. It should now be clear that the AI companies behaviour i.e. backstabbing the mathematicians and stealing their life's work is the problem and not the usage of AI itself. I also pointed you to Self-Determination Theory(SDT) to understand Intrinsic/Extrinsic Motivations that drives Mathematicians (and also Scientists/Researchers/Knowledge-workers) to spend their entire lives in the pursuit of knowledge. From SDT it can be seen that the AI companies behaviour, threatens everybody's Autonomy, nullifies their Mastery/Competence and robs them of Purpose/Relatedness/Belongingness. Nobody should accept this.

stbede 20d ago
That far from charitable. My arguement is: A) According to the letter, mathematicians most value: - mathematicians developing their mastery - developing mathematics that provides insights and can be eventually synthesized down conceptually to textbook theories - caring for students and fostering their growth - human mathematicians getting credit for doing important work - etc. B) According to the letter, AI labs aren't trying to do any of these. Conclusion) The result is that AI is not competing with them in their goals of - mathematicians developing their mastery - developing mathematics that provides insights and can be eventually synthesized down conceptually to textbook theories - caring for students and fostering their growth - human mathematicians getting credit for doing important work - etc. The upshot is that mathematicians still have autonomy to pursue those goals, develop mastery at achieving those goals, and remain part of a community of others pursuing them. The only mathematician who loses these sources of motivation is the one who embraces the use of AI and personally abandons those goals. The real crisis will come if AI does try to align itself with the goals of the mathematical community and if AI turns out to be better at developing insight, training students, writing comprehensible textbooks, etc. Then the top mathematicians will truly provide little value to their community.
- rramadass 19d ago
  You have conveniently left out the spirit of the mathematicians communique and are only trying to argue its letter which is what makes me think you are being disingenuously clueless or cluelessly disingenuous. To repeat myself again, the crux of the problem is; AI companies are stealing our hard-won lifelong research findings, which we were already sharing freely, without attribution/credit and building upon them without informed consent nor compensation. The AI companies are robbing the mathematicians by not involving them in major decisions about solving the leading/promising research problems in their domain. They are the ones who have identified the problems, its importance, promising approaches of attack etc. which have all been freely shared and which the AI companies have used to build their models. For example, in the Navier-Stokes case, OpenAI could have easily informed the mathematicians like so, "hey, your research approach looks promising, do you have any objections to us using your research in our models and throwing a lot of compute resources at it so that we can finally solve it?" Every mathematician would have jumped at the chance since that is what he was doing anyway but at a small scale and far slower pace. Instead OpenAI went behind the mathematicians back while building upon his and others work without attribution/credit nor compensation. This is plagiarism, cheating and despicable behaviour and should not be tolerated by anybody.