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Leading academic mathematicians now worried about AI putting them out of work

https://x.com/wtgowers/status/2052830948685676605?s=46 AI...
,.,....,..,.,.,,,,..,..,.,..,.,.,.,...
  05/10/26
xo's own Terry Tao didn't seem so worried when he appeared o...
Giant Naked Hitler
  05/10/26
Yeah because he's already part of the priesthood that needs ...
The Penis
  05/10/26
underrated
Ray Poast
  05/10/26
...
Post nut horror
  05/10/26
and he also thinks that will always be the case, when 4 year...
,.,....,..,.,.,,,,..,..,.,..,.,.,.,...
  05/10/26
Hallucinating is part of the reason that LLMs work at all, t...
Giant Naked Hitler
  05/10/26
cr
Ray Poast
  05/10/26
Humans confabulate shit all the time too and it often gets r...
The Penis
  05/10/26
there's nothing inherent about the model architectures that ...
,.,....,..,.,.,,,,..,..,.,..,.,.,.,...
  05/10/26
LLMs have no empirical model of the world. They cannot check...
Ray Poast
  05/10/26
Math isn't empirical though edit: I guess you actually al...
The Penis
  05/10/26
Lol fuck each and every one of them.
Post nut horror
  05/10/26
lol @ ugly nerds seeing their one asset (being 'smart') comp...
...,.,.,.,....,..
  05/10/26
and it appears good looking hot people can now be good looki...
.,.,.,.,.,,,.,.,.,.,.,
  05/10/26
And soon ugly people will become hot thanks to radical new b...
harold lauder
  05/10/26
Or, in the alternative, turned into Soylent Green.
CriminalConversation
  05/10/26
...
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  05/10/26


Poast new message in this thread



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Date: May 10th, 2026 12:58 PM
Author: ,.,....,..,.,.,,,,..,..,.,..,.,.,.,...


https://x.com/wtgowers/status/2052830948685676605?s=46

AI can now generate results in a couple hours that are basically equivalent to a chapter in a math phd thesis. Pretty 180. Hopefully these people can learn to do something actually productive for humanity instead of getting paid to solve puzzles only they care about. SWE and math being wrecked by AI should free up a lot of human capital.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878547)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 12:58 PM
Author: Giant Naked Hitler (hitler did nothing wrong)

xo's own Terry Tao didn't seem so worried when he appeared on Dwarkesh

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878549)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:27 PM
Author: The Penis

Yeah because he's already part of the priesthood that needs to be kept around to "interpret" ai results

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878571)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:28 PM
Author: Ray Poast

underrated

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878572)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:33 PM
Author: Post nut horror



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878578)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:38 PM
Author: ,.,....,..,.,.,,,,..,..,.,..,.,.,.,...


and he also thinks that will always be the case, when 4 years ago these models couldn't reliably solve grade school level problems.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878587)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:50 PM
Author: Giant Naked Hitler (hitler did nothing wrong)

Hallucinating is part of the reason that LLMs work at all, they have to be non deterministic is my basic understanding. Therefore there will almost certainly need to be a human in the loop for truly important problems. With that being said, Erdos problems appear to not be that meaningful for real world applications so maybe he will get automated by clankers.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878606)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:51 PM
Author: Ray Poast

cr

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878609)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 2:50 PM
Author: The Penis

Humans confabulate shit all the time too and it often gets reified as knowledge for long periods of time. Look at literally the entire history of human knowledge.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878670)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 4:01 PM
Author: ,.,....,..,.,.,,,,..,..,.,..,.,.,.,...


there's nothing inherent about the model architectures that means they will always bullshit. the sampling aspect is beside the point. they are being trained to minimize prediction error on arbitrary human text. at the limit, this means no hallucinations. this isn't practical in reality because the models can't memorize everything, but different types of post-training will allow the models to recognize potentially incorrect tokens and self-correct. they can already do this reasonably well, which is people can now vibe code reasonably large SWE projects. model reliability in verifiable domains is growing quite rapidly.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878796)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 4:08 PM
Author: Ray Poast

LLMs have no empirical model of the world. They cannot check hypotheses. All they can do is create them. They need a human to check them

The reason why they are able to self-check hypotheses in math and coding is because you can literally run checks of those within digital engines, on a computer

You can't do that for irl. LLMs will always be confined to digital computer environments

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878810)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 4:48 PM
Author: The Penis

Math isn't empirical though

edit: I guess you actually already addressed this to an extent in your poast re: your "math and coding" example, but this thread is about it's use in math which is purely abstract, which is what humans traditionally sucked at except for the smartest ones and also the perfect use-case for ai. In math and theoretical physics ai can traverse vast theoretical spaces in short periods of time and find new structure and rule out others which vastly speeds up discovery in those areas. We need humans to prompt and curate sure, but AI is going to be hugely important to these fields. I think its a mistake to think the only use for AI is completely decommissioning meat machines. Although it likely ultimately will retire many of them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878839)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:25 PM
Author: Post nut horror

Lol fuck each and every one of them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878567)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:31 PM
Author: ...,.,.,.,....,..

lol @ ugly nerds seeing their one asset (being 'smart') completely devalued overnight. being smart is worthless now. they have nothing. now they're just ugly *and* useless. (this applies to xo, inasmuch as anyone was ever smart here).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878577)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:35 PM
Author: .,.,.,.,.,,,.,.,.,.,.,

and it appears good looking hot people can now be good looking, hot AND smart if they so require

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878582)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:47 PM
Author: harold lauder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPMyxMyJr-0)

And soon ugly people will become hot thanks to radical new biology unlocked by AI

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878599)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 3:44 PM
Author: CriminalConversation

Or, in the alternative, turned into Soylent Green.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878761)



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Date: May 10th, 2026 1:41 PM
Author: ...,.,.,.,....,..



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5865573&forum_id=2Reputation#49878590)