[emil-lp]

"GPT did this". Authored by Guevara (Institute for Advanced Study), Lupsasca (Vanderbilt University), Skinner (University of Cambridge), and Strominger (Harvard University).

Probably not something that the average GI Joe would be able to prompt their way to...

I am skeptical until they show the chat log leading up to the conjecture and proof.

[Sharlin]

I'm a big LLM sceptic but that's… moving the goalposts a little too far. How could an average Joe even understand the conjecture enough to write the initial prompt? Or do you mean that experts would give him the prompt to copy-paste, and hope that the proverbial monkey can come up with a Henry V? At the very least posit someone like a grad student in particle physics as the human user.

[buttered_toast]

I would interpret it as implying that the result was due to a lot more hand-holding that what is let on.

Was the initial conjecture based on leading info from the other authors or was it simply the authors presenting all information and asking for a conjecture?

Did the authors know that there was a simpler means of expressing the conjecture and lead GPT to its conclusion, or did it spontaneously do so on its own after seeing the hand-written expressions.

These aren't my personal views, but there is some handwaving about the process in such a way that reads as if this was all spontaneous involvement on GPTs end.

But regardless, a result is a result so I'm content with it.

[lupsasca]

Hi I am an author of the paper. We believed that a simple formula should exist but had not been able to find it despite significant effort. It was a collaborative effort but GPT definitely solved the problem for us.

[buttered_toast]

Oh that's really cool, I am not versed in physics by any means, can you explain how you believed there to be a simple formula but were unable to find it? What would lead you to believe that instead of just accepting it at face value?

[lupsasca]

There are closely related "MHV amplitudes" which naively obey a really complicated formula, but for which there famously also exists a much simpler "Parke-Taylor formula". Alfredo had derived a complicated expression for these new "single-minus amplitudes" and we were hoping we could find an analogue of the simpler "Parke-Taylor formula" for them.

[buttered_toast]

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I see you might have already answered this elsewhere so it's much appreciated.

[etraql]

Do you also work at OpenAI? A comment pointing that out was flagged by the LLM marketers.

[buttered_toast]

I think it says in the paper that he does, but it's also public knowledge.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lupsasca-9096a214/

[lupsasca]

Correct, on both counts!

[lamontcg]

That's kinda the whole point.

SpaceX can use an optimization algorithm to hoverslam a rocket booster, but the optimization algorithm didn't really figure it out on its own.

The optimization algorithm was used by human experts to solve the problem.

[Sharlin]

In this case there certainly were experts doing hand-holding. But simply being able to ask the right question isn't too much to ask, is it? If it had been merely a grad student or even a PhD student who had asked ChatGPT to figure out the result, and ChatGPT had done that, even interactively with the student, this would be huge news. But an average person? Expecting LLMs to transcend the GIGO principle is a bit too much.

[slopusila]

hey, GPT, solve this tough conjecture I've read about on Quanta. make no mistakes

[jmalicki]

"Grad Student did this". Co-authored by <Famous advisor 1>, <Famous advisor 2>, <Famous advisor 3>.

Is this so different?

[sejje]

The Average Joe reads at an 8th grade level. 21% are illiterate in the US.

LLMs surpassed the average human a long time ago IMO. When LLMs fail to measure up to humans, it's that they fail to measure up against human experts in a given field, not the Average Joe.

We are surrounded by NPCs.

[famouswaffles]

The paper has all those prominent institutions who acknowledge the contribution so realistically, why would you be skeptical ?

[kristopolous]

they probably also acknowledge pytorch, numpy, R ... but we don't attribute those tools as the agent who did the work.

I know we've been primed by sci-fi movies and comic books, but like pytorch, gpt-5.2 is just a piece of software running on a computer instrumented by humans.

[famouswaffles]

I don't see the authors of those libraries getting a credit on the paper, do you ?

>I know we've been primed by sci-fi movies and comic books, but like pytorch, gpt-5.2 is just a piece of software running on a computer instrumented by humans.

Sure

[what]

At least one of the authors works for OpenAI. It’s a puff piece.

[name_taken_duh]

And we are just a system running on carbon-based biology in our physics computer run by whomever. What makes us special, to say that we are different than GPT-5.2?

[palmotea]

> And we are just a system running on carbon-based biology in our physics computer run by whomever. What makes us special, to say that we are different than GPT-5.2?

Do you really want to be treated like an old PC (dismembered, stripped for parts, and discarded) when your boss is done with you (i.e. not treated specially compared to a computer system)?

But I think if you want a fuller answer, you've got a lot of reading to do. It's not like you're the first person in the world to ask that question.

[name_taken_duh]

You misunderstood, I am prohumanism. My comment was about challenging the believe that models cant be as intelligent as we are, which cant be answered definitely, though a lot of empirical evidence seems to point to the fact, that we are not fundamentally different intelligence wise. Just closing our eyes will not help in preserving humanism, so we have to shape the world with models in a human friendly way, aka alignment.

[kristopolous]

It's always a value decision. You can say shiny rocks are more important than people and worth murdering over.

Not an uncommon belief.

Here you are saying you personally value a computer program more than people

It exposes a value that you personally hold and that's it

That is separate from the material reality that all this AI stuff is ultimately just computer software... It's an epistemological tautology in the same way that say, a plane, car and refrigerator are all just machines - they can break, need maintenance, take expertise, can be dangerous...

LLMs haven't broken the categorical constraints - you've just been primed to think such a thing is supposed to be different through movies and entertainment.

I hate to tell you but most movie AIs are just allegories for institutional power. They're narrative devices about how callous and indifferent power structures are to our underlying shared humanity

[Refreeze5224]

Their point is, would you be able to prompt your way to this result? No. Already trained physicists working at world-leading institutions could. So what progress have we really made here?

[famouswaffles]

It's a stupid point then. Are you able to work with a world leading physicist to any significant degree? No

[emil-lp]

It's like saying: calculator drives new result in theoretical physics

(In the hands of leading experts.)

[famouswaffles]

No it's not like saying that at all, which is why Open AI have a credit on the paper.

[camdenreslink]

Open AI have a credit on the paper because it is marketing.

[not_kurt_godel]

And even if it were, calculators (computers) were world-changing technology when they were new.

[Nevermark]

No it’s like saying: New expert drives new results with existing experts.

The humans put in significant effort and couldn’t do it. They didn’t then crank it out with some search/match algorithm.

They tried a new technology, modeled (literally) on us as reasoners, that is only just being able to reason at their level and it did what they couldn’t.

The fact that the experts were a critical context for the model, doesn’t make the models performance any less significant. Collaborators always provide important context for each other.