• 2 Posts
  • 57 Comments
Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: March 2nd, 2024

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  • LLMs are basically just good pattern matchers. But just like how A* search can find a better path than a human can by breaking the problem down into simple steps, so too can an LLM make progress on an unsolved problem if it’s used properly and combined with a formal reasoning engine.

    I’m going to be real with you: the big insight behind almost all new mathematical ideas is based on the math that came before. Nothing is truly original the way AI detractors seem to believe.

    By “does some reasoning steps,” OpenAI presumably are just invoking the LLM iteratively so that it can review its own output before providing a final answer. It’s not a new idea.


  • I do agree that grad students don’t exactly live in luxury, and frequently develop mental health crises. But their contributions and insight are what power their labs. Profs often have to spend so much time teaching and chasing grants that they can’t do much real research. Academia overall is in a sad state.

    But Tao is a superstar, and a charismatic blogger. I’d be disappointed to learn he mistreats his grad students. (I don’t know if he even has any tbh)













  • I would not have assumed you’re a rude asshole based on the rest of your comment – but either way, thank you for being friendly.

    I don’t like (any) as that means I acquiesce to the years of being assumed male by default on the Internet. I feel spite about that not because I feel euphoric when she/her’d but rather at a more base level of feminism – that male-by-default is a patriarchal practice and so I object to it. If I were ok with (any) then I’d be OK with he/him. As a cis woman, he/him doesn’t cause me dysphoria, it just causes me to roll my eyes at the state of the world. Making my pronouns visible isn’t a fix for this, it’s just a band-aid as it doesn’t magically cause the world to be less sexist. Honestly, getting he/him’d by default is basically a useful litmus test for the state of sexism in a community I guess.

    I’m not interested in changing my pronouns to a neopronoun or to any other pronoun really, but it’s a nice suggestion and the aside about the mathematician is really interesting. As a mathematician myself I approve of the etymology. :)