[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.

[lupsasca]

My pleasure---thank you for your interest!

[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