IT之家 October 23 news — According to Business Insider's report today (the 23rd), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently delivered a speech at Stanford University to hundreds of students in the audience who were worried about their future career prospects.
Altman believes that as AI made a major push into mathematical research, mathematicians went through several stages similar to 'grief.' At first there was disbelief, followed by pain. 'On day one, the reaction was roughly: 'we're doomed, the field of mathematics is finished.' 'Better goadvise graduate students to switch majors。’”
Then the pain turned into anger. 'By day three, people might start thinking: 'what OpenAI is doing is really going too far。’”
According to Altman's description, by day five mathematiciansbegan to accept reality: AI is becoming an indispensable tool in mathematical research and proof work. 'We saw many people begin to think, my career path as a mathematician will be different going forward,but hopefully it will be better than before。’”
IT之家 learned from the report that Altman's optimistic judgment about the prospects of the mathematical community stands in sharp contrast to the views of some mathematicians on this fundamental transformation.
In September this year, OpenAI suddenly announced that its AI model had cracked a famous mathematical problem involving the Navier–Stokes equations — a problem that the most distinguished scholars in mathematics had been unable to solve since the 19th century.
OpenAI's statement angered several prominent mathematicians. Two researchers from New York University and Anthropic accused OpenAI of using their chat data with AI to help crack the problem. Other mathematicians complained that even if AI had truly found a solution, it did not show the derivation, leaving human mathematicians with nothing but verifying the result,which is far less exciting than solving a problem oneself。
Before the uproar had ended, a new controversy emerged. A group of undergraduates at Caltech, worried that AI was rapidly changing mathematical research and wanting to keep pace with technological development, launched a 'math marathon' competition encouraging participantsto use AI to tackle long-unsolved mathematical problems。
More than 700 scholars then published an open letter criticizing the competition forpromoting AI-generated junk content, and OpenAI therefore withdrew its sponsorship. The organizers later revised the competition rules, and the competition is scheduled to be held in November (11).
Recently, UCLA professor Terence Tao also stated bluntly that the 'romantic era' of mathematical research is over. Many top mathematicians have begun changing the way they work, shifting from independently tackling problems toverifying the solutions AI provides. This month, OpenAI again claimed to have solved more than 700 mathematical problems, prompting Tao to sigh: 'Something is being lost.'
Altman, standing on the other side of the debate, is optimistic about the changes brought by AI. Speaking about companies restructuring their workforce because of AI, Altman responded that he does not believe AI will cause an employment catastrophe. However, compared with other disciplines and industries, the mathematics community is clearly being hit by AI much faster. 'I think we have never seen a field go through this entire set of changes sorapidly。”