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You and I aren't having the same conversation. You want to psychologize people's motivations, including my own, which is interesting to speculate about but off

by stbede 18d ago

You and I aren't having the same conversation. You want to psychologize people's motivations, including my own, which is interesting to speculate about but off topic. I want to discuss the arguments made in the letter, the arguments that 25 Fields medalists actually signed on to. I am capable of having a conversation with you on a great many topics. What you aren't capable of, apparently, is forcing me to want to have the one you want to have. As far as calling names: "Your comment is ... disingenuous." "you are being disingenuously clueless or cluelessly disingenuous." and now: "I had imagined i was interacting with somebody who could understand the larger picture"

rramadass 18d ago
Nope, you need to engage in a root-cause conversation which is the key here. Just focusing on the words in a letter which as i already pointed out is couched in politically-correct terms due to etiquette is meaningless. There is a lot unsaid there which you have to tease-out by reading between the lines. It was written in response to OpenAI's behaviour (Tristan Buckmaster himself called what they did as "malpractice" in one of his tweets) but looking at the larger picture of AI in Mathematics. The key phrase from the letter is; ... Often these solutions are announced in a rush, leaving no time for a proper writeup, the isolation of new methods and ideas, and citing relevant previous work of others. As in all creative professions, this raises severe attribution and plagiarism questions. ... The inference should be clear. Hence we need to start with the underlying psychological motivations and then see how it explains observed behaviour. And it is not even complicated but somewhat obvious. The fact that you (many others) refuse to address this is why i question your (and theirs) motivations/agenda. As regards your last few lines regarding "calling names" they are all only w.r.t. to the issues being discussed and are just rhetorical/descriptive judgements on your comments.
- stbede 17d ago
  Fair enough. But I think you may be conflating an explanation with an excuse. I think your root cause analysis may be fruitful for explaining why they wrote the letter. But I don't think that it excuses what they actually wrote.
  - rramadass 16d ago
    The letter is just a call to action reminding everyone how Mathematics is done and how Mathematicians operate within their domain with all the Human factors involved. But because of the bad behaviour (plagiarism, going-behind-the-back etc.) and incentives misalignment, AI companies are currently not aligned with that. There is also the structural problem of generating proofs at a rapid pace just because you can but then have no way for "proof digestion" which is the key in the mathematical process. See Terence Tao's writings - https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/ai-views.html https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/ai-views.html
    - stbede 15d ago
      I agree. But my frustration is that there is no argument why AI should be aligned with mathematics. Why can't the mathematicians that value their own community remain aloof from what AI companies are doing. Can't they continue to take their time digesting proofs, gaining insights, and attributing credit to mathematicians doing good work. Here's how I perceive the situation: Before: - mathematicians digest current results and develop insights - insights lead to new results - new results give mathematicians an opportunity to credit those insights Now: - AI companies release a bunch of potentially uncredited proofs - mathematicians digest these results and gain insights - mathematicians recapitulate AI proofs in terms of their deeper insights and theory - mathematicians give credit for these new insights and progress in understanding, even though the binary true-false status of theorems were already determined beforehand. If the true-false status itself isn't real mathematics, then mathematicians still can do the real mathematics after the fact and continue to celebrate each others' work. The only thing they lose is the ability to attribute a human to deciding the true-false status, which isn't real math anyways (though maybe valuable for motivation). What they gain is efficiency. Every mathematician working towards proving NS won't blow up can now shift their resources to understanding why it can blowup. Perhaps the letter is implying that the mathematical community itself will become misaligned with how mathematics is currently done. I'm unpersuaded it's entirely the AI companies' fault if that happens. AI may create a lot of temptations for individual mathematicians to become lazy, but that seems like something the mathematical community needs to resolve for itself. Every institution needs to take a lot of self-ownership here. I'm also annoyed about parents complaining about their own children being addicted to their phones as if it isn't in their own power to determine if their children have phones in the first place. I think this letter would be better directed at universities and journals. They should be holding their own institutions to account if they feel like they are adopting the mentalities of the AI companies and no longer faithfully executing the values of mathematics.

by stbede 18d ago

rramadass 18d ago

Nope, you need to engage in a root-cause conversation which is the key here. Just focusing on the words in a letter which as i already pointed out is couched in politically-correct terms due to etiquette is meaningless. There is a lot unsaid there which you have to tease-out by reading between the lines. It was written in response to OpenAI's behaviour (Tristan Buckmaster himself called what they did as "malpractice" in one of his tweets) but looking at the larger picture of AI in Mathematics. The key phrase from the letter is; ... Often these solutions are announced in a rush, leaving no time for a proper writeup, the isolation of new methods and ideas, and citing relevant previous work of others. As in all creative professions, this raises severe attribution and plagiarism questions. ... The inference should be clear. Hence we need to start with the underlying psychological motivations and then see how it explains observed behaviour. And it is not even complicated but somewhat obvious. The fact that you (many others) refuse to address this is why i question your (and theirs) motivations/agenda. As regards your last few lines regarding "calling names" they are all only w.r.t. to the issues being discussed and are just rhetorical/descriptive judgements on your comments.

stbede 17d ago
Fair enough. But I think you may be conflating an explanation with an excuse. I think your root cause analysis may be fruitful for explaining why they wrote the letter. But I don't think that it excuses what they actually wrote.
- rramadass 16d ago
  The letter is just a call to action reminding everyone how Mathematics is done and how Mathematicians operate within their domain with all the Human factors involved. But because of the bad behaviour (plagiarism, going-behind-the-back etc.) and incentives misalignment, AI companies are currently not aligned with that. There is also the structural problem of generating proofs at a rapid pace just because you can but then have no way for "proof digestion" which is the key in the mathematical process. See Terence Tao's writings - https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/ai-views.html https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/ai-views.html
  - stbede 15d ago
    I agree. But my frustration is that there is no argument why AI should be aligned with mathematics. Why can't the mathematicians that value their own community remain aloof from what AI companies are doing. Can't they continue to take their time digesting proofs, gaining insights, and attributing credit to mathematicians doing good work. Here's how I perceive the situation: Before: - mathematicians digest current results and develop insights - insights lead to new results - new results give mathematicians an opportunity to credit those insights Now: - AI companies release a bunch of potentially uncredited proofs - mathematicians digest these results and gain insights - mathematicians recapitulate AI proofs in terms of their deeper insights and theory - mathematicians give credit for these new insights and progress in understanding, even though the binary true-false status of theorems were already determined beforehand. If the true-false status itself isn't real mathematics, then mathematicians still can do the real mathematics after the fact and continue to celebrate each others' work. The only thing they lose is the ability to attribute a human to deciding the true-false status, which isn't real math anyways (though maybe valuable for motivation). What they gain is efficiency. Every mathematician working towards proving NS won't blow up can now shift their resources to understanding why it can blowup. Perhaps the letter is implying that the mathematical community itself will become misaligned with how mathematics is currently done. I'm unpersuaded it's entirely the AI companies' fault if that happens. AI may create a lot of temptations for individual mathematicians to become lazy, but that seems like something the mathematical community needs to resolve for itself. Every institution needs to take a lot of self-ownership here. I'm also annoyed about parents complaining about their own children being addicted to their phones as if it isn't in their own power to determine if their children have phones in the first place. I think this letter would be better directed at universities and journals. They should be holding their own institutions to account if they feel like they are adopting the mentalities of the AI companies and no longer faithfully executing the values of mathematics.