Grant Sanderson – AI and the future of math
Always so much fun to chat with Grant.
AI has been making much faster progress in math than in other fields. As a result, mathematics is showing us, very concretely, what AI progress in other fields will look like. Even within mathematics, there’s a jagged landscape. What does it look like?
What is the nature of the most important conceptual breakthroughs in the history of mathematics, and how different are they from what AIs are currently able to do?
Does AI (on net) increase or decrease human understanding of the field?
How big is the overhang from having AIs systematically try to connect ideas already in the literature?
And what advice does Grant have for aspiring mathematicians, coders, and other students who are passionate about fields that are being most transformed upon by AI?
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) – AI is discovering new proofs. Is that AGI?
(00:11:32) – The verification loop on conceptual breakthroughs can be a century long
(00:26:12) – Will we understand an AI proof of the Riemann hypothesis?
(00:38:08) – Can AI find the hidden bridges between fields?
(00:53:48) – Why real-world tasks don’t fit into RL environments
(01:07:07) – Good writing requires theory of mind that AI still lacks
(01:16:02) – Why learning will still depend on human curation
Transcript
00:00:00 – AI is discovering new proofs. Is that AGI?
Dwarkesh Patel
Today, I’m chatting with Grant Sanderson, who runs 3Blue1Brown and is now working on a new project documenting the progress AI is making in math. I wanted to talk to you about this because AI has been making the fastest progress in mathematics out of any other field. Whatever is happening here, and whatever way we’re seeing AI progress happen or not happen, will tell us about what will happen to the rest of the world as AI gets better and better.
I wanted to start with this question I asked you when I first interviewed you three years ago. I asked you, once we have AIs that can get gold in the International Math Olympiad, wouldn’t that just be AGI? Wouldn’t this just be able to do anything any hu
