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by al_borland 12 days ago
A months ago headlines read that ChatGPT “solved” an 80 year old Erdős problem.

I found Cal Newport’s take on this to be much more balanced. From what I remember, ChatGPT didn’t “solve” anything. It dumped out a bunch of text, that humans reviewed, and it gave them an idea for how to disprove a thing Erdős thought was true, but couldn’t prove.

https://youtu.be/fhZRWZ6J4k4

In cases like this, it seemed like the LLM got a lot more credit than it deserved. So I’m guessing it would go something like that.

2 comments

LLMs are increasingly solving math problems on their own, producing entire correct proofs

I like Cal but his takes consistently miss the slope of improvement of the technology

Yes, it's hard to tell what is real here because the AI labs are clearly engaging in extensive marketing and advertising to shape public perception. They need people to believe that these tools are more capable and more competent than they really are. It's also important that they control the narrative and push out counter-narratives that would hurt public perception of the tool, etc. tldr they are actively trying to manage the hype cycle.