In recent weeks, we’ve seen footage of mathematicians crying because AI has triggered an existential and spiritual crisis for their profession.
AI has made the race to publish mathematical breakthroughs pointless, according to the Australian professor at the centre of an international controversy this week.
Mathematics professor Francesco Maggi, when discussing the “remarkable ability” that large language models (LLM) have to generate mathematical proofs, says the technology poses a challenge to something deeply human.
So what are we doing?
Do policymakers appreciate that people are extremely concerned about a technology that has a powerful ability to devalue human creative expression?
We’re living in a world of major system collapse, and policymakers are forcing technology into our homes (and data centres into our neighbourhoods) that will undermine the very things that bring meaning to our lives, and that would otherwise help us to cope with a collapsing world.
This article will be so funny in 10 years. LLMs are running at massive losses. There are good reasons to believe the technology is a bit of a dead end, doomed to output unaffordable mediocrity.
The maths results are overblown, a few lucky finds after burning a pile of cash and hiring mathematicians to pick through the pile of slop. Oh and plagurism.
Good to know.
Yes.
Will you resist or are just accepting the proposition?
I won’t accept that they are stealing the opus of humanity then spit it out at us in manipulated forms and formats so we have to pay for them to uber wealthy tech bros and their minions. This plus using up enormous amounts of energy and water (in many situations) in the midst of climate change, taking workers away from building homes for people in order to build data centres of one sort or another plus taking millions of other jobs (and meaning) from the general population. Let alone the fear it is injecting into people’s sense of security and stability.
There has been focused emphasis on STEM teaching and research (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) for years now. And its easy to see why: STEM is what makes modern tech possible. New inventions, new ways of building and using old inventions, better understanding of the physical laws of the universe; and so on. At face value, it sounds like pretty good stuff. Imagine what amazing tech will come next…
But I think we’ve missed something. In particular, we’ve sidelined the philosophical / human study of what is the goal? There has been this implicit assumption that more is better. More tech. More stuff. Faster stuff. Bigger stuff. Stronger / lighter / more connected stuff… So we focus on creating all that stuff. But perhaps that never should have been the goal in the first place. The good life does not necessarily need all that, and in fact, I think soon we’re going to have to come to terms with the idea that a lot of it might actually be detrimental. We could end up less happy, less sustainable, less engaged in our community, less wise, less motivated to do anything at all. Apathetic, and pathetic.
I think we overshot with STEM. I’ve worked professionally as a scientist, and a programmer, and a mathematician. But I now reckon we need art and philosophy more than we need technology. We need to work out what is actually good; and I don’t believe the answer is “more”.
I think every STEM needs to have mandatory social science modules. We got here because tech bros don’t fucking understand how to human
Couldn’t agree more.
We could end up less happy, less sustainable, less engaged in our community, less wise, less motivated to do anything at all. Apathetic, and pathetic.
A lot of people seem to already be there. Of greatest concern to me is the increase in mental health challenges among the young. They have the major part of their life ahead of them and they don’t like what they see. The techno-connectivity we’ve inflicted on them in the insatiable hunt for more profits has and is hurting many of them.
Yeah I work in computational maths and it seems like everyone at the moment is either having a bit of a crisis/thinking of becoming a farmer or they’ve gone completely mental and all in with AI.
In a non-capitalist system things might not be as bad, but all our PhD and postdocs are screwed basically, it was already extremely hard to get a job.
I reckon such fine minds could contribute greatly to any field including ways of creating a better society without enslavement to AI tyrants
Yeah but the permanent staff don’t give a shit about making a better world. They’re just enjoying playing with their new toys.
Idk the major political parties are doing a good enough job of that without the help of AI.
It shouldn’t. By every meaningful metric, if it’s a part of our lives in the way it should be, unforced, unobtrusive, there at our discretion and not that of bad actors.
The problem is that the bad actors are the AI developers themselves, be they govt as in China, or private with govt support as in the US. They are racing each other for world domination and it seems to me that in the West, in particular, the rush and lack of regulation are hurting nature, society, creativity and ethics.
