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Joined 7 months ago
Cake day: February 15th, 2026
  • spectrums_coherence@piefed.socialtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Mathematicians are grappling with the possibility that AI might eclipse themEnglish
    1·
    28 days ago

    Mathematics, and really any other subject, are not just about solving formalized problem. It is much more important to understand what question to ask.

    One of my colleague once said the definitions in a good (computer science) paper should be the most interesting part, theorem statements should be the second interesting, and the proofs should be obvious.

    Formal proof means nothing if it cannot give us insight in other proofs.

    Same with open problems, Mathematician love open problems because given that no expert are able to solve them, that likely impiles there exists new mathematical constructions behind them. Fermat’s last theorem on its own is no where near as interesting as the mathematics that leads to its soluion.

    Given that AI have yet to be able to wield the mathematical corpus effectively in solving large projects (or even fully autonomously improve large software), it would need human guidence, and by that, human experts are needed to understand the problem.

    To qoute another one of my colleagues, people orchestrated AI to solve an open problem are simply the apple falling on Newton’s head. Apple “knows” that gravity is true, because its motion follows it, but it takes a Newton to formulate and explain gravity that leads to a number of technological advancement later. Without the question “why do apple fall”, apple will keep falling, we will keep notocing it, but we would never turn that observation into useful technologies we enjoy today.

  • spectrums_coherence@piefed.socialtoTechnology@lemmy.world•Mathematicians are grappling with the possibility that AI might eclipse themEnglish
    2·
    28 days ago

    Suppose we had a library filled with proofs of every theorem [in mathematics], as well as excellent guides that could, given a question, take us to the answer and explain it. What would a mathematician do in such a library?

    If you ask the question this way, the answer becomes clear: they would be unbelievably excited, and immediately get to work. They would immediately start asking questions: how does one prove the Riemann hypothesis? The Hodge conjecture? Their own pet obsession (in my case, the Grothendieck-Katz p-curvature conjecture)? Then they would work until they understood the answer. The job would not be done, not even close.

    This paragraph by Daniel Litt feels to me like hubris coming from someone in the position of power. Many tech-optimistic mathematician are not at the risk of being replaced by AI because they are either on the tenure track or already tenured.

    We need to acknowledge that mathematics is a subject of more human importance than economical importance. In this hyper profit driven world, field without a primary economical drive will necessarily shrink significantly.

    Mathematics have no doubt experienced that: in the cold war, mathematics is behind most of the technological advancement that lead to concrete economical output. Later, as many of these fields stablized, engineer and computer scientists takes the place of mathematician, and mathematics shrunk significantly.

    Now mathematics still holds importance because people believe it still encapsulates important ideas that have the potential to be the next generation of economical driver force. And mathematicians are important to preserve and disseminate such knowledge.

    So if such truth oracle described above can develop and articulate any mathematical idea better than (or even close to the quality of) any mathematicians, it would be fun for established mathematician to flip through the answer sheets of their puzzle, but it would kill the financial driver and wipe out most of professional mathematics with it.

  • spectrums_coherence@piefed.socialtoScience@mander.xyz•A cutting-edge gene-editing trial in China went disastrously wrong. A family wants accountabilityEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    At times during the conversation, Linda became overwhelmed and turned away from the camera, as Jason pressed on. They recalled that when Mei’s birthday came around earlier this year, they said nothing to each other, though they both assumed it was on the other’s mind.

    “We do not discuss that,” Linda said.

    During the call, Linda finally told her husband how she had spent that day. While he was at work, she finally returned to the old apartment and sat down on Mei’s bed surrounded by all her things. She had purchased a chocolate cupcake on the way and now picked at it as she imagined that her daughter was still at her side.

    By the time she finished telling her story, Jason was welling up. Linda glanced over at him tenderly. “My husband didn’t know this,” she said. “I cannot cry every day, but that day, I think, I can cry in the room.”

    Oh man…

  • spectrums_coherence@piefed.socialtoScience@mander.xyz•A cutting-edge gene-editing trial in China went disastrously wrong. A family wants accountabilityEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Turns out they did on both mice and primates, and the side effect is also evaluated:

    Another potential concern, however, emerged about 1 month before Mei was treated: the final conclusions of a primate toxicology study conducted at PriMed. The company’s report, dated 17 February 2025, concluded all four monkeys that received the therapy, whether at low or high doses, developed moderate to severe liver damage.

    However, the ethics board did not review the safety report:

    An ethics panel at Xinhua Hospital in China approved a gene-editing trial, but had not reviewed primate data suggesting safety concerns. Another hospital panel later concluded the experimental treatment was “definitely related” to Mei’s death.

    Even worse, the brain development data from the primate study is entirely unconvincing:

    But four of the experts Science asked to assess this figure, including one of the original reviewers of the Nature manuscript, expressed concerns about how well the primate proof-of-concept study was conducted. The submitted paper had no control samples to show the stain was selectively highlighting the gene editor. “It’s completely unconvincing,” says David Sanders, a biochemist at Purdue University who has studied gene therapy. “One can’t have the confidence that one isn’t mostly looking at background staining.”