[energy123]

Terence Tao gave a recent talk about this issue (lack of attribution). He called it the decoupling of implicit and explicit goals. AI is only good at solving the explicit goals for now, and humans don't have the bandwidth or the institutions to know how to integrate AI into the field.

https://youtu.be/Uc2zt198U_U?si=OkwO3xT8-zhSABwh

[sigmoid10]

That is an odd summary of the talk. He was talking about how the explicit goal of solving a problem is kind of becoming trivialized, but the abundance of 100-page AI generated proofs will not help the implicit goal of furthering human understanding, because we lack the bandwidth to really digest them. Adhering to things like (human-focused) academic etiquette is a different problem and can probably easily be solved by just giving the model the right context. But having humanity keep up with AI insights into math and science is something we might have to give up eventually. Or at least whoever does will be far ahead of us as a society, because most people's lives will only be affected by the explicit results.

[computerex]

I feel like that’s already becoming true. I sometimes work on problems/projects where the AI agent is definitely more qualified than me to call the shots.

For example, this library here for deep learning is 100% ai generated and far beyond my technical capabilities.

https://github.com/computerex/dlgo

[RealityVoid]

I find AI a great scaffolding for improving understanding and mental models. BUT! It's all in how you use it.

[sigmoid10]

The real question is: Do you need to understand it fully for it to improve your life?

For example, if you're in fundamental science (or generally a fan of reductionism), it for sure would be nice to understand the universe instead of just having access to an AI that can comprehend it. But to the majority of the population it only matters that someone (or something) understands it enough to make it useful to others.

[RealityVoid]

Understanding everything fully is futile. But there are many many many things that by understanding you improve your life. So, I feel the question is... not useful, I would say. Yes, you need to search for things that if you knew them you would improve your life. No, you can not know them all beforehand. Yes, there are such things. There always are.

[sigmoid10]

They only improve your life if you actually work on something that you yourself are trying to improve. Most people are fine with the status quo, so if something like LLMs can take over the understanding of complex tasks, they won't even notice, except for the fact that more of these tasks will get done.

[Schlagbohrer]

Reminds me of a Carl Sagan quote, that our society is built on science and technology yet few understand it.

[felixg3]

LLMs are a mirror of the user‘s input capabilities, like every other computer programme.

[energy123]

An odd summary of a talk you didn't even listen to? He explicitly mentioned references and attribution as a special case of implicit goals.

[sigmoid10]

Do you really think these models lack the intelligence or language capabilities to handle human etiquette? They can't "read the room" yet because they lack modalities and people don't give them the right context. That's the issue. But I have no doubt that what you two describe here will be solved very soon. And yet the actual implicit goal of all this will need humanity to rethink its priorities.