After US-based OpenAI announced it had solved the unsolved math problem known as the Navier-Stokes equations, 25 Fields Medal laureates released an emergency statement on September 11 condemning the AI-driven solving of hard math problems. The statement reportedly plans to gather more signatures from mathematicians going forward. On 5channel, opinions split: some voiced fears that being outdone by AI could erode mathematicians’ sense of purpose and cost them their jobs, others dismissed AI as merely repackaging ideas humans came up with, while still others took the pragmatic view that the process doesn’t matter as long as results are delivered.
On the 11th, 25 mathematicians who hold the Fields Medal — often called the “Nobel Prize of mathematics” — released an emergency statement condemning efforts by companies to use artificial intelligence (AI) to solve difficult math problems. They say they plan to collect signatures from even more mathematicians going forward.
The statement appears to be a response to US-based OpenAI’s announcement that it had solved a hard math problem known as the Navier-Stokes equations. The Navier-Stokes equations were named one of the Millennium Prize Problems by the US-based Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000, carrying a $1 million prize…
Source: nikkei.com / Read the original article here
Programmers (lol)
Mathematicians (lol)
Once data centers have spare capacity to burn, plowing through unsolved math problems one by one is exactly the first thing they'll use it for.
So it comes down to "please don't use AI, for the sake of our advantage," doesn't it.
If mere AI can solve it, their whole reason for existing disappears — so is this really just about being scared of losing their jobs?
Honestly, nobody in the general public cares who solves a math problem — we just want to use the results.
No, that's not it.
It's about what a kid actually learns once they start having AI do their homework for them.
These people aren't banning the use of AI to solve problems.
Futile resistance.
It's useful, isn't it.
People say that if AI keeps getting free rein like this, mathematicians will eventually stop publishing their ideas altogether.
In principle a von Neumann-type mind is still faster and more power-efficient.
Catching up is still ahead of us.
Yeah, fair point.
If someone out there is thinking "I'm so close to solving it!"
right before AI beats them to it, that'd be hell.
Guess all that effort was wasted, lol
Next time, learn to make AI work for you instead.
the era of Detroit: Become Human.
I think it's fine to just leave that kind of thing as a pastime for humans to enjoy.
No, wasn't it (v·∇)v that stole the idea and cracked the solution?
AI would nail it more accurately anyway.
They've had the media loudly repeating "linear rain band" (a Japanese term for a stalled heavy-rain storm cluster) over and over,
even having them warn of a "risk of a linear rain band forming" to stoke fear,
yet they can't actually predict any of it —
it's all explained after the fact.
So they hide behind vague "risk of forming" language to cover up how poor their forecasting really is,
and coining the term "linear rain band" in the first place was just another layer of that cover-up.
And now, on top of it all,
they've started saying "squall line" instead —
which is actually the more internationally standard term, yet they never used it until now.
It's nothing but the Japan Meteorological Agency putting on a show so they can keep the supercomputer budget flowing their way.
And the media just falls in line without a shred of criticism.
Some people probably poured their entire lives into it to the point of losing their minds.
The real problem here is something else entirely:
AI doesn't actually understand the underlying theory —
it's just generating text in whatever way suits it,
and it's humans who have to vouch for whether the resulting output is even correct.
Even the mistakes get "corrected" based on edits from people who already back the AI's output.
Bottom line, it's no different from Yutabon (a controversial Japanese child YouTuber and school dropout) claiming he proved a math formula.
a lot of the AI-related stuff he posts is months behind,
and in the worst cases, about a year behind.
If this is who's running the thread, YouTube's coverage is way fresher.
Background and key points of this debate
The Navier-Stokes equations are one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems named by the US Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000, each carrying a $1 million prize at the time. Of those seven, only the Poincaré Conjecture has been certified as solved so far, and the rest have stumped mathematicians for decades. The Fields Medal, awarded once every four years to mathematicians under 40, is often called the “Nobel Prize of mathematics” — which makes it unusually significant that 25 of its laureates signed a joint statement at all. The thread’s debate splits largely into two camps talking past each other: anxiety that being solved by AI undermines mathematicians’ profession and intellectual edge (comments 6, 17, etc.), versus a pragmatic view that the means don’t matter as long as results are delivered (comments 10, 15, etc.). As comment 21 points out, the statement doesn’t actually call for banning AI use outright — it also raises an educational point about what humans are supposed to learn along the way, a fact worth noting apart from the emotional backlash.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Business News+) thread “[AI] Math Problem Solved by AI, 25 Fields Medalists Issue Statement Condemning It as “Harmful to Science”.”
