But I thought the whole idea of the list was that it catalogued precisely the problems Erdos posed that he did not solve. The broader set of "all problems Erdos found interesting, including those he resolved" would be both larger and I suspect qualitatively different.
Erdosproblems.com Succumbs to the AI Onslaught (erdosproblems.com)
65 pointsby pfdietz9 hours ago26 comments
dooglius an hour ago
> I think it is against the spirit of Erdős to regard any problem as 'closed' -- whenever one form of a question is answered, many others are created, and all problems deserve continued attention.
socializer an hour ago
The idea is that people liked recreational math and enjoyed practicing it. AI bros with little interest in math showed up for marketing reasons or to "show" the nerds. Some mathematicians joined them too. One of the nerds is now saying "I don't find it fun anymore". That's really it. I wouldn't look for hidden meaning when it's spelled out pretty clearly.
magicalist 10 minutes ago
Erdos never had a list of all the problems he posed, and the people who have compiled lists at times had to do guesswork for what were actually problems or not. So there is no precise list of Erdos problems, just to be clear.
What I think you might be missing, though, is that Erdos was inherently playful with these problems. He'd sometimes just drop in the middle of a paper "hey, this variant of this lemma is neat, I bet it's true, but I'll give cash to anyone who disproves it" and move on. Or challenge a colleague while visiting and collaborating with them, and the problem would get spread by word of mouth. The problems often weren't things he thought long and hard about individually, but they appealed to his sense of aesthetics and curiosity and play. I think that's maybe close to what Bloom is talking about there. It's handy to have a catalog, but fundamentally, creating a set of unsolved math problems was not what Erdos was doing.
Lerc 4 minutes ago
Instead of succumbing, this reads like a considered adaptation to modern conditions.
They are thinking about what it is they do and what their intent was in doing it. Their adaptation is not a blind resistance to change but to preserve their intent.
I especially that they explicitly state that this is what they are trying and that not dropping a decree of new rules that are set in stone.
More platforms should take this approach.
pfdietz 9 hours ago
(Title is my clickbaiting)
From the link:
"The main way that people publicly interact with the site now is to advertise their AI-generated proofs, often without any attempt to explain them, but as a way to record a (increasingly meaningless) priority claim.
This is very different to what I imagined, and I don't want to manage a website which does this."
nemomarx an hour ago
"I believe that websites with this function should exist -- places where people can record AI-generated proofs, even if purely formal with no human understanding, to save others wasting their tokens generating the same proof, and so that other people can access and use them if they desire. There are now several candidates for such repositories, and if managed responsibly, they can serve a useful role in the mathematical ecosystem. I personally don't want to manage one.
Just as one does not open a restaurant in an abattoir, it is important that there be a separation between such repositories and a site which aims to promote the actual questions, place them in an appropriate context, and give a useful overview of the current state of human understanding."
I think this is a very reasonable blog post overall. A site for agents to read has many different needs and concerns than one for humans. Really anthropic or openai should be whipping this up for theirs.
Qiu_Zhanxuan 4 hours ago
A welcome change, people posting AI-generated proof to claim credits are the scourge on mankind discoveries. It's time everyone that still hasn't, let go of their ego. All Hail the era of elegance.
jwpapi an hour ago
Seems like a well thought through response and really smart changes.
I especially like that he’s allowing AI if it generates a better learning proof. That’s so considerate.
fwlr an hour ago
It is becoming exceedingly difficult to ignore that the benefits of AI accrue disproportionately to those most deficient of scruples, while its costs and harms fall upon the selfless and pleasant like laser-guided virtue-seeking munitions.
I do not particularly care to debate a theory of why it is so, nor press a charge of malice or intent; mere observation suffices to convince me that this shit is corrosive to the better nature of humanity.
dist-epoch 33 minutes ago
One of the largest group of people which benefit from AI are programmers.
Do you think they also are mostly deficient of scruples?
12997 29 minutes ago
Obviously those that benefit from AI have no ethics and morals. You can see it daily here.
zdp7 19 minutes ago
It's the Walmart Effect at internet speeds.
mistercheph 27 minutes ago
Woah that's racist against robots you luddite, extermination of humanity is inevitable and this resistance is obviously futile.
Retr0id an hour ago
Editorialized title?
tomalbrc 19 minutes ago
bananaflag 2 hours ago
I find it sad that I can't use the site as a tracker for solved problems anymore.
pfdietz 2 hours ago
Me too, although I understand the creator of the website doesn't want to have their role reduced to that of documenting the AI tsunami.
I had been expecting this since updates became irregular.
Perhaps this will force those solving these problems to produce something worthy of arxiv submission. Or maybe someone will produce a knock off site that continues to track these problems.
fwlr an hour ago
Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these:
a tragedy of the commons has happened, again.afsg-qsgf an hour ago
The fracking or strip mining of mathematics is repulsive. It must be noted here that Jeremy Avigad, who posted a soothing pro-AI guest article on Tao's blog on Oct. 5th, is running a strip mining project:
12997 28 minutes ago
Come on, you can flag the truth, too. The AI propagandists must maintain their 1984-level lies.
mistercheph 26 minutes ago
Book burning is good, it makes books more accessible!
charcircuit an hour ago
It's disappointing to see the author having such a low view of AI native mathematicians. The excitement from solving these problems should be considered a good thing. More people engaging and having fun with math is positive.
>Some view the future of mathematics as a dystopian...
>I believe Erdős would have found this future grim indeed
If you describe something as dystopian that is going to majorly bias someone's opinion towards being grim. That doesn't mean that dystopian description is reality.
dbt00 an hour ago
You clipped a lot of incredibly relevant context to make his point sound far more inflammatory than it is.
> Some view the future of mathematics as a dystopian arcade of button-pressing, staring at a screen waiting for AI to do the thinking for us, with the main human involvement limited to asking the initial question and offering sporadic words of encouragement. Each new proof is then thrown into a repository, to only ever be read by other AIs, and the human presses the next button.
Is that your view of all AI native mathematicians? It's not mine, but it seems apparent to me that many people think that this is our future, or even should be our future. Same with building software (which is my field, unlike math).
I would find that personally, to use his word, grim.
phoronixrly 42 minutes ago
> AI-native mathematicians
What a world we live in...
bobbbbywiwiwo 23 minutes ago
Not to argue off of authority or anecdote, but the vision of mathematics described is disparaging to anyone who already is or is on the path of being a mathematician. In particular, I think your view is only amenable to armchair/recreational mathematicians, and I really do not see the world being described as being one that is mathematically elegant or “better”.