mehulashah

I have the utmost respect for Terrence Tao and the mathematics community. I don’t really like the fact that the frontier model vendors are pushing the envelope without first building consensus in the community.

However, I feel the mathematical community is a bit righteous by claiming that model vendors are totally irresponsible in their behavior. These vendors may have legitimately improved the state of the art in mathematics, so what are they supposed to do with the results? Sit on them? Become king and queen makers by choosing the people that should get credit?

The world is irrevocably changed with AI, and I’m glad that the AI vendors are pushing the agenda forward. Yes, they’ve perhaps destroyed the career trajectories of mathematicians who were seeking those results. That said, that is the risk of doing mathematics— there have been innumerable times mathematicians have been scooped.

Yes, the AI proofs are messy. These proofs often do not follow mathematical norms. They sometimes seem like they’re from another “planet”. Like other crackpots (or misunderstood crackpots) before AI, mathematicians can choose to ignore these proofs. Or they can investigate them to see what lies within.

Let the frontier models release what they know; transparency is what we should all strive for. What is a credible proof, who gets credit, and how that credit gets assigned is a social norm that only mathematicians get to decide.

I am gobsmacked by this letter.

Every one of the mathematicians on this letter was likely aware of the progress in AI, and knew this was coming if they were honest with themselves. Some have even helped pushed the agenda forward. Inevitably, there would be a day when AI would find solutions to problems that defined the field. That day has come perhaps sooner than anticipated.

This letter smacks of fear. Their way of learning, work, achievement, and community is threatened by the ever steady pace of technology.

They say:

“But solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight. Forgetting this in the world of AI may turn the tool against the primary goal. Indeed, the mass production at faster and faster pace of "true/false" statements could destroy fertile ground instead of breathing life into new ideas.”

Indeed, but the mathematics community needs to look inward not outward.

Achievement has long been defined by solving problems that other mathematicians and scientists have found crucial for understanding shapes, numbers, and natural phenomena.

The race to solve these hasn’t always been collaborative, cordial, or healthy. Too often, individuals have worked in secret or in small groups in order to claim priority and the accolades that come along. Further, I’ve even seen worse behavior not worth getting into here.

Now AI can solve these problems, oftentimes without building the abstractions that we need for understanding. And it is increasingly easier to collaborate in large groups without needing to trust everyone’s ability because we can check the truth of their work and incorporate it into the larger effort.

Certainly, the mathematical community and AI are misaligned. But, it is unclear that AI needs to change. Rather, I argue, it is the mathematical community that will need to change. Instead of focusing on the teleological pursuit of the truth of blessed problems, we need to reward the concise explanations and beautiful theories that give clear understanding. In turn, we can use AI to help us collaborate better and better our understanding.

For all the naysayers in this thread, I gotta say you’re wrong. Vint is a class act. Humble, helpful, and optimistic. Not to mention one of the most impactful computer scientists of our generation.

The first and seminal Indian tech blogger. I looked up to him. RIP.

He makes it sound simple, and in some ways, it is. You have to not only build the thing, but also find the thing that people want. It’s the latter that’s as hard if not harder than the former.

In addition, the converse is not true. Just because you’ve found something that grows fast and in large market, doesn’t mean you’ll become a billionaire. With all humility, I’ve been lucky to have done that twice, but in a large company. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that doesn’t necessarily make you a billionaire.

To be clear: yes, it’s possible, it’s not too late. Read the book.

Eric - I've worked for NASA, ATT, IBM, HP, Amazon, and Google, not to mention a couple of startups that I started in between. None of them (except the startups, but they were brief) stayed true to their original mission. I haven't read your new book, but IMO, it's because the founders leave and the next leadership don't share the vision or values of the founders in the same way. After all, a company is a collaboration among people who want to make a contribution. When the people change, the company changes. It's inevitable.

That said, you seem to have archetypes above Costco, Patagonia, and Novo Nordisk that avoided it.

Can you comment on not what it takes to build such a company, but rather how to transform companies like those that I worked for into ones that resist gravity? Or is it too late?

Why not?

This administration has made it clear in no uncertain words or actions. They don’t want immigrants. And if you think this is bad policy, please stop voting for them. Please vote for the alternative candidates. This is the easiest way to fix this nonsense.

I just want to state for the record that this will fail harder than Google Plus.

This is cool.

This is a great article and I share its goals. But, it ignores something fundamental about humans as a collective — capitalism. Capitalism is what got us here and is at odds with first understanding and then building. We’ve done this before with other technologies because that’s how our societies have learned to grow and collaborate at large scale. First build and build to its limits. Then understand and fix if necessary. Nothing new here, but stopping the trend toward epistemic collapse requires building incentives into the system for us humans to coevolve with AI.

This is sick.

So, I’m left wondering why he did it the hard way.