| HN Mirror

simianwords 57 days ago

how can you ask this question with on a post titled "Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem"???? are you looking for some randomised control trial? omg

adQ28 56 days ago

We just look at comments from AI boosters and it is self-evident that no intelligence is being equalized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47911291

God, do people not read my posts? I wrote this: "It also exposes their ACTUAL intelligence which is to say most of HN is not too smart."

These types of people need citations for the time of day. They don't know how to debate or discuss in abstract terms. Reality freezes over if no scientific papers exist on the topic.

owebmaster 56 days ago

> God, do people not read my posts?

I don't know man, maybe you got too equalized yet but the things you say are not very smart. Getting angry over that isn't a good argument either.

Bro nobody is angry. You’re misreading everything. That line you quoted is more of a slight annoyance.

You probably need to look at your own reading comprehension skills before you comment on my intelligence.

> These types of people need citations for the time of day. They don't know how to debate or discuss in abstract terms. Reality freezes over if no scientific papers exist on the topic.

Oh man you have captured the exact emotion I had. These people need randomised control trials to prove any inane thing lmaoo. Reddit brained I tell you

JumpCrisscross 56 days ago

Idk, going out on a limb and guessing the folks who hang out on erdosproblems.com aren’t run-of-the-mill dumbasses. The prompt, if you look at it, is actually quite clever. Not as clever as the proof. But far from the equalization OP posits.

Why be such an absolutist.

How about I caveat it the way you want:

AI equalizes intelligence in the sense that it closes the gap. Not perfectly, not infinitely, but directionally. The distribution compresses. The floor rises faster than the ceiling, so people who used to be far apart end up operating much closer together.

You can already see it in the Erdős example. The person who wrote that prompt wasn’t some random idiot. It took real cleverness to even set it up that way. But the fact that they could get that far, with assistance, is exactly the point. The distance between “amateur” and “expert” shrinks when the tool fills in large parts of the path.

Now extend that forward. Today it’s one clever person, one problem, one careful interaction. As the tooling improves, that same pattern scales. Better reasoning, better search, better guidance. The amount of lift the tool provides increases, which means the gap continues to narrow.

All the supposed “counterpoints” people bring up are already implied in the claim. “Equalize” here obviously means moving closer to equality. Is it NOT obvious that LLMs don't actually equalize intelligence to a level of 100%? Do I actually need to spell that out? If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to.

But instead people latch onto the most absurd version possible, knock that down, and act like they’ve said something meaningful. It’s the same mindset as that guy demanding a formal paper or citation for an observation you can see unfolding in real time. Not because it’s unclear, but because engaging with the actual claim is uncomfortable. It’s easier to distort it into something extreme and dismiss it than to admit the gap is closing.

JumpCrisscross 56 days ago

I’ll agree the top of the stack may have compressed downwards. But that leaves open the possibilities that (a) the ceiling has risen and (b) the floor isn’t really moving, inasmuch as productively engaging with any tool required baseline intelligence.

More pointedly, I don’t think anyone who opposes AI does so because they want to remain the smart kid in the room.

> If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to

You’re on HN buddy. If you measure stakes by how pedantically you’re challenged, everything will rise to existential terms.

When i said stake, I meant HN is especially vulnerable because the stake is the HN communities identity as programmers. Consistently on HN you see articles on IQ voted up. People take pride in their intelligence and programming skills here... and AI is dismantling their identity piece by piece.

It's more then being the smart kid in the room. The future is pointing to a place where programming is just a one hour tutorial on how to tell AI to do it for you. What happens to you if you're entire identity and career was built on being a programmer as many people are here? THAT is what is at stake.

Directionally it is correct - an amateur wouldn’t be able to do this without ChatGPT. You can’t expect maximal democratisation

bsza 57 days ago

> ChatGPT equalizes intelligence

Yes, I love living in communism too. Imagine if you had to pay money for it or something. The wealthiest people would get unrestricted access to intelligence while the poor none. And the people in the middle would eventually find themselves unable to function without a product they can no longer afford. Chilling, huh? Good thing humans are known for sharing in the benefits of technological progress equally. /s

Jtarii 56 days ago

Huh?

Before ChatGPT it costs ~$100,000 to aquire intelligence good enough to solve this Erdos problem, now it costs ~$200.

I'm really confused at what you are even taking an issue with.

His core issue is jealousy and fear. I don't think these types of people are at the top of the intelligence curve (more closer to bottom) but that is orthogonal to my point. What I'm saying is his personality archetype makes him think (keyword) he's at the top of the intelligence curve and an equalization means, personally to him, that he's losing his edge.

More specific to HN is the archetype of: "I have spent years honing my craft as a expert programmer, my identity is predicated on being an expert programmer in which high intelligence is causal and associated positively with my identity" That's why ironically most of HN was completely wrong about AI. They were wrong about driverless cars, they claimed vibe coding was trash. It's the people who think (keyword) their stupid/average (aka general public) who got it right... because perceptually they stand to gain from the equalization.

Anyway.. this fear and jealousy is not something most humans can admit to themselves. Nobody will actually be able to realize that these emotions drive there thinking. They have to lie to themselves and rationalize a different reality. That's why you get absurdist takes like this.

To everyone reading. It is obviously that chatGPT does not equalize intelligence to the point of 100%. That statement is obviously not saying that. Everyone knows this. You want proof?:

Look at the declaration of independence... without getting to pedantic: "All Men are created equal" is not saying all Males are 100% equal. Everyone knows this. First off no one is 100% equal.. and second the statement in a modern context is obviously not referring to only men. It is referring to women&men and clearly men and women are nowhere near equal.

So if you all know this about the declaration of independence... how can you not see the same nuance for: "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence."? First ask yourself... do you think you're smart? If you do, then the self delusion I just described is likely happening with you.

simianwords 57 days ago

what? the post is literally titled "Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem". stop spreading FUD about unaffordability

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-living-with-less-th...

bsza 57 days ago

They used ChatGPT Pro to solve it. Over 50% of people in the world couldn't afford ChatGPT Pro ($200/mo) even if they spent more than half of their income on it. [1]

What was that about "spreading FUD about unaffordability"?

sunaookami 57 days ago

They didn't buy ChatGPT Pro themselves. You could've done the same as the students in the article and get a free subscription if you were interested in this instead of trolling.

bsza 56 days ago

> You could've done the same

Please show me the steps to get a $200 subscription for free that works 100% of the time regardless of who you are. I'm listening.

ChatGPT flattened the difference between top .0001 percentile mathematician and an amateur. This is the definition of making intelligence more available.

You are exaggerating the situation by essentially claiming since some people can’t afford 200 dollars this means ChatGPT is not democratising intelligence. It’s a bit strange to claim this because according to you it only becomes affordable when maximal number of people can afford it. It’s a bit childish.

Directionally it is democratising. Are more people able to afford higher level intelligence? Yes.

This is the most pedantic argument ever.

"All men are created equal" is obviously not literally saying all humans are 100% equal. Just like how "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence" is not saying ChatGPT equalizes the intelligence of all humans to a level of 100%.

I'm not going to spell out what I meant by: "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence". You can likely figure it out for yourself, because the problem doesn't have anything to do with your reading comprehension. The problem is more akin to self delusion, you don't want to face reality so you interpret the statement from the most absurdist angle possible.

The admins at HN actually noticed this tendency among people and encoded it into the rules: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

bsza 56 days ago

It is not “absurdist” to call out a baseless claim that doesn’t take into account over half of humanity, a percentage that will grow even further once investor money inevitably runs out. If your response to that is to wave away more than 4 billion people, then you’re not even trying to look like you care about reality, you’re just trying to make yourself feel better with some made-up nonsense.

You seem to be under the misconception that you somehow “own” ChatGPT or are entitled to the insight it provides. You don’t and you aren’t. You are at the mercy of trillion-dollar private companies that owe you nothing. Their products’ intelligence is not your intelligence. Whatever profits you’re seeing from it, it’s currently losing them money. And when that changes, so will your image of them as benefactors of humanity who make intelligence available to all.

It is fucking absurdist and pedantic when I hear this drivel coming out of the mouth of a hypocrite. You’re already part of the privileged few. Every single thing that you do from drinking clean water to writing your bullshit on the Internet is the result of your own arguments of distributing technology among the top percentage. And as a recipient of such benefits you should have the intelligence to see that even that much matters. Why don’t you raise your shit against the ass holes who are really making things unequal: Internet service providers and their astronomical fees which don’t equalize the world enough such that homeless people have access to the internet. That’s societies real problem according to your genius logic… so stop your tirade against AI as their are bigger fish to fry.

> You seem to be under the misconception that you somehow “own” ChatGPT or are entitled to the insight it provides.

Right now for the price of a new car I can definitely get enough hardware to run a local LLM to the quality of ChatGPT at my home. And this is just the status quo. The demand for this technology and the projection of improvement in prices predicts a future where you can run one for the price of a new computer. Wake up.

But who the fuck cares? Point being is AI is equalizing intelligence and you’re just throwing in tangents and side branches to try to disentangle the obvious general truth which I will repeat: AI is fucking equalizing intelligence and if you don’t agree, you’re absurd.

> It is not “absurdist” to call out a baseless claim that doesn’t take into account over half of humanity, a percentage that will grow even further once investor money inevitably runs out.

I love the confidence that comes from this claim. You can run open models in your laptop today compare to the best models from 2 years ago. But sure spread your FUd about investor money running out