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Comment by T-A

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Comment by T-A

> Your monopoly theory lacks a credible motive

The motive is obvious and all over the comments. For you convenience, it can be summarized as gatekeeping. Start unpacking it and you will find ego (these are people at the top of a cloistered social pecking order who suddenly see that order threatened), entitlement (their writing reflects a belief that they own mathematics and have the right to dictate how it's done by others) and economics (academic funding follows prestige; being outdone by machines undermines the prestige, hence the funding).

> and also ignores the fact that your quote specifically targets the frontier labs, not LLMs or computational tools in general

That's like saying "your opposition to autonomous weapons ignores the fact that they specifically target [INSERT FAVORITE TARGET]". I ignore what's irrelevant.

If Ken Griffin had not chosen to donate $3 billion to CMU [1] and instead had spent that money on tokens to solve a bunch of open problems [2][3] using publicly available LLMs, do you seriously believe their reaction would have been more positive?

> The group (https://agmai.org/) comprises of world-renowned mathematicians, including several Fields medalists,

I am well aware of who they are, thank you very much.

> who have nothing left to prove.

In the old order now under threat.

> If they felt like it they could quit mathematics today and take private sector jobs paying far more than their professor salaries.

A common delusion among students and maybe even some professors who've never set foot outside academia. The authors of TFA know better, of course. Their current conditions amount to enjoying a comfortable living while pursuing their favorite hobby full time. In the private sector they would have to justify their salary by (gasp) working on something (OMG!) applied with a reasonable prospect of (would you believe it?) meaningfully contributing to their employer's (pardon my French) bottom line. A revolting thought, and prospective employers know that too. Both parties know it wouldn't work.

> the working group's various recommendations simply aim to ensure that computer-generated mathematical activity aligns with that purpose

If so it completely misses the mark.

[1] https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/hedge-fund-ceo-ken-gr...

[2] https://www.unsolvedmath.com/

[3] https://www.openproblemgarden.org/

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