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Watch AI Breaks a 90-Year Math Problem, Life’s Alphabet in Space, and Science Funding
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1:31:18where the Jacobian is constant >> and then look for places where things would overlap because if the Jacobian is constant that means that any given like infinite decimal area is is being put into the same thing. So it's not just trivially that like >> the thing is going to the same spot. It's like there's like overlap happening where like different parts of the of the space are getting mapped to the same thing in some weird way but somehow the Jacobian determinant is still a constant. >> I I think what's been interesting to hear about the discussion of open problems and AI systems and this is I think is a perfect example. Um there was a discussion it's going to escape me who it was with but there there were sort of

1:31:58three diff there were three people in the field who were coming from three different perspectives about AI's potential in particularly this idea of novelty >> um or or scientific discovery as a general not well- definfined term >> and one of the arguments was that even if a system like Fable has scooped up every math paper ever. >> Yeah. >> Right. It also has the benefit of having every physics paper, every biology paper and because of the way structurally

1:32:40um these fields are for human beings, although it's maybe changing in recent times, people who are very deep in a particular lane or expertise in math or in physics or in biology, they may they may dip their toe in orthogonal fields, But they don't have the same level of expertise in their own field in that other field. >> Yeah. >> And simply by just having that same level of expertise >> in a cross functional in a cross field way >> cuz a lot of science is making these connections that are non-obvious. The ability for these systems to make

1:33:21connections that are nonobvious is just exponential. >> Yeah. And we may discover that there are a lot of solutions just simply in taking known information and finding uh things you can carry over from physics that have an application in math that we've just not explored. Yeah, that's true. I mean like in string theory for example, string theory bleeds a lot into fundamental mathematics. Right now, one of the things that is really unclear about this discovery is like what the prompt that was used, right? Um if the chain of thought has

From the episode
  1. EP 50

    AI Breaks a 90-Year Math Problem, Life’s Alphabet in Space, and Science Funding

    Asteroid samples reveal life’s molecular alphabet, Washington battles over who controls science funding, and AI produces a counterexample to a 90-year-old mathematics conjecture.

    AI Breaks a 90-Year Math Problem, Life’s Alphabet in Space, and Science Funding

Artificial IntelligenceAstrobiologyMathematicsScience Policy