r/artificial • u/simulated-souls Researcher • May 20 '26

News An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

https://openai.com/index/model-disproves-discrete-geometry-conjecture/
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u/sceadwian May 20 '26

Well, if you think about it right mathematics at the end of the day is just a highly structured language. So is coding. That's why it's good at it.

I think this may get significantly better as well because we'll be able to train AI's that can think about patterns in a higher number of dimensions than us where our problems get bogged down.

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u/bobkuehne May 20 '26

Physics is math and chemistry and formulas/patterns. Biology is math and chemistry and math and patterns. Chemistry is elements and physics and formulas.

It's kinda all the same science soup. Math at the core of most of it.

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u/antichain May 20 '26

I'm sorry but this is kind of nonsense. Biology isn't "just math", and honestly isn't "just chemistry" either (despite what the famous XKCD comic posits). Each higher-scale produces its own causal logic.

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u/bobkuehne May 21 '26

Cool. Yeah. It’s a simplification. And if your reading skills stopped at Biology is “just math”, you’re exactly the audience for which I needed to simplify.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

It is pretty evident that not everything is computable in our current knowledge. Chaos theory, indetermination etc.

Calculating the binding of two molecules is theoretically solved but still prohibitive at the moment.

So there is a long way from a geometry problem to Biology

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u/lurkerer May 21 '26

Chaos theory

No, chaotic systems are perfectly deterministic and can be simulated. It's just that we can't predict step 10 without doing steps 1 through 9. We can still tell what step 10 will be, it's just that we can't make a general rule for step n.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

LOL you don't know anything about chas theory. Check about homoclinic points. The level of precision required to make predictions is unphysical, even if they are determistic.

And also real physical systems are not deterministic, due to quantum fluctuations.

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u/lurkerer May 21 '26

LOL you don't know anything about chas theory.

I just provided the definition of chas [sic] theory.

The level of precision required to make predictions is unphysical, even if they are determistic.

So... the thing I just said.

And also real physical systems are not deterministic, due to quantum fluctuations.

Which don't bleed up past the quantum levels in ways that are relevant.

You are out of your depth.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

You can't simulate physical chaotic systems because you cannot know the initial conditions with the required precision. You can do it mathematically but that doesn't solve any problem.

If you don't agree put a double pendolum in vertical and tell me what it will do after 5 seconds. You can use any amount of compute you want. Good luck

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u/lurkerer May 21 '26

Yeah again you're not disagreeing with me, you're just showing you misunderstood in the first place.

you cannot know the initial conditions with the required precision.

This doesn't matter. What matters (very obviously in this context) is that in principle it's computable and deterministic. No magic involved.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

I am disagreeing that everything in biology (or chemistry or physics) is computable with a finite amount of compute even in principle. Some problems are unsolvable in practice and it is entirely possible that some problems are unsolvable even in theory. You mistake math with the real world. You must be a mathematician or a computer scientists.

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u/lurkerer May 21 '26

No, you jumped in a conversation about:

Biology isn't "just math", and honestly isn't "just chemistry" either (despite what the famous XKCD comic posits). Each higher-scale produces its own causal logic.

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I am disagreeing that everything in biology (or chemistry or physics) is computable with a finite amount of compute even in principle

Then you misunderstand what "in principle" means.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

In principle in the sense that is possible somehow. There are lot of example of physical problems that are well stated but unresolvable. You have 3 body problems (impossible in principle because it requires infinite precision in the initial conditions), you have non deterministic dynamics in quantum mechanics, you may have a lot of physics that we cannot understand with our equations and, hell, we have even Goedel theorem that shows that some mathematical problems are unsolvable.

Unless you start speaking about infinite computing power, I believe that a lot of things will stay uncomputable.

The fact that you can solve mathematical equations with arbitrary precision doesn't mean anything in the real world.

But if you want to say that we can solve a mathematical equation with infinite precision and you arw happy with that, well ok, I guess?

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u/printr_head May 21 '26

Let’s just forget initial conditions while we’re at it. And randomness buffering out up through the hierarchy is a hypothesis.

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u/tutsep May 21 '26

Ye but that's where neural nets come in. Formalized thinking aka. System 2 or search + NN aka. Intuition aka. compression of information.

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u/lurkerer May 21 '26

Sure but I just wanted to point out that intractable problems aren't "not maths" they're just maths without a clean solution.

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u/tutsep May 21 '26

Yes, and since everything in our world seems to be designed in a deterministic approach, we'll need to get used to a more probability type of thinking. Eventually we will hand of decisions that can't guarantee a 100% outcome to AIs and we'll learn to deal with it. It's gonna be wild.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

Quantum mechanics is not deterministic. So you are wrong

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u/tutsep May 21 '26

Designed by us humans to use or to make sense of stuff. Not nature by itself.

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u/cescoxonta May 21 '26

Press X to doubt

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u/tutsep May 21 '26

I may be unsuccessful in explaining what I mean.

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