[emil-lp]

"GPT did this". Authored by Guevara (Institute for Advanced Study), Lupsasca (Vanderbilt University), Skinner (University of Cambridge), and Strominger (Harvard University).

Probably not something that the average GI Joe would be able to prompt their way to...

I am skeptical until they show the chat log leading up to the conjecture and proof.

[Sharlin]

I'm a big LLM sceptic but that's… moving the goalposts a little too far. How could an average Joe even understand the conjecture enough to write the initial prompt? Or do you mean that experts would give him the prompt to copy-paste, and hope that the proverbial monkey can come up with a Henry V? At the very least posit someone like a grad student in particle physics as the human user.

[buttered_toast]

I would interpret it as implying that the result was due to a lot more hand-holding that what is let on.

Was the initial conjecture based on leading info from the other authors or was it simply the authors presenting all information and asking for a conjecture?

Did the authors know that there was a simpler means of expressing the conjecture and lead GPT to its conclusion, or did it spontaneously do so on its own after seeing the hand-written expressions.

These aren't my personal views, but there is some handwaving about the process in such a way that reads as if this was all spontaneous involvement on GPTs end.

But regardless, a result is a result so I'm content with it.

[lamontcg]

That's kinda the whole point.

SpaceX can use an optimization algorithm to hoverslam a rocket booster, but the optimization algorithm didn't really figure it out on its own.

The optimization algorithm was used by human experts to solve the problem.

[slopusila]

hey, GPT, solve this tough conjecture I've read about on Quanta. make no mistakes

[jmalicki]

"Grad Student did this". Co-authored by <Famous advisor 1>, <Famous advisor 2>, <Famous advisor 3>.

Is this so different?

[sejje]

The Average Joe reads at an 8th grade level. 21% are illiterate in the US.

LLMs surpassed the average human a long time ago IMO. When LLMs fail to measure up to humans, it's that they fail to measure up against human experts in a given field, not the Average Joe.

We are surrounded by NPCs.

[famouswaffles]

The paper has all those prominent institutions who acknowledge the contribution so realistically, why would you be skeptical ?

[kristopolous]

they probably also acknowledge pytorch, numpy, R ... but we don't attribute those tools as the agent who did the work.

I know we've been primed by sci-fi movies and comic books, but like pytorch, gpt-5.2 is just a piece of software running on a computer instrumented by humans.

[Refreeze5224]

Their point is, would you be able to prompt your way to this result? No. Already trained physicists working at world-leading institutions could. So what progress have we really made here?