There is a failure to understand that the process is the result. You don't study mathematics or computer science and information theory to produce commodities. You study them to transform your mind. The output of an LLM is useless without a human mind to comprehend it. We can have Super Intelligence, but if humans are incapable of comprehending it, it is just another useless dead artifact. Practice, applied over a lifetime, is what creates the capability for comprehension. Asking an LLM to give you an answer creates an artifact. Humans being humans, most of their requests boil down to "make me rich without having to work for it," so the request itself is paradoxical and impossible to satisfy. Philosophers have only been saying this for all of human history, so don't hold your breath for any breakthroughs.
For the collective (humanity, mathematical/scientific community etc). Math is not done in isolation, and if somebody does so then feedback to the community does not work as well.
Mathematics, and basic science to a degree, face the issue that they create their own problems and paths through this kind of tranformation, where external feedback is secondary. It is not as if "I want to build an app/car/robot, I let AI do it". It is as if you decide to let AI decide what to build for you and how to build it, and you do nothing at all. Instead, the pursuit of understanding is the goal itself, and through the course of humanity we have learnt that this understanding can also be useful, but this is not necessarily guiding how this understanding is gained.
Most of the contexts people here have in mind are when problems are well and externally defined. Cure a disease, optimise an engine, make an app that does X, etc. This is not exactly the case in theoretical math and never was really.
metalspot · · focus · HN ↗
adverbly · · focus · HN ↗
For who though?
Is it important that each person understand it on their own?
Why does it impact me if another human understands something or not?
It impacts me right now because that human can use that knowledge to explain things to me or to build new things using that knowledge.
But if an AI can explain and build better, then what good does it do having the other human know the thing?
Understanding might have intrinsic value to me, but intrinsic value to me doesn't pay the bills.
What am I missing here? I kinda expected better from Terrance given such an audacious title.
freehorse · · focus · HN ↗
For the collective (humanity, mathematical/scientific community etc). Math is not done in isolation, and if somebody does so then feedback to the community does not work as well.
Mathematics, and basic science to a degree, face the issue that they create their own problems and paths through this kind of tranformation, where external feedback is secondary. It is not as if "I want to build an app/car/robot, I let AI do it". It is as if you decide to let AI decide what to build for you and how to build it, and you do nothing at all. Instead, the pursuit of understanding is the goal itself, and through the course of humanity we have learnt that this understanding can also be useful, but this is not necessarily guiding how this understanding is gained.
Most of the contexts people here have in mind are when problems are well and externally defined. Cure a disease, optimise an engine, make an app that does X, etc. This is not exactly the case in theoretical math and never was really.