Google DeepMind used a large language model to solve an unsolvable math problem
www.technologyreview.com
They had to throw away most of what it produced but there was gold among the garbage.

The researchers started by sketching out the problem they wanted to solve in Python, a popular programming language. But they left out the lines in the program that would specify how to solve it. That is where FunSearch comes in. It gets Codey to fill in the blanks—in effect, to suggest code that will solve the problem.

A second algorithm then checks and scores what Codey comes up with. The best suggestions—even if not yet correct—are saved and given back to Codey, which tries to complete the program again. “Many will be nonsensical, some will be sensible, and a few will be truly inspired,” says Kohli. “You take those truly inspired ones and you say, ‘Okay, take these ones and repeat.’”

After a couple of million suggestions and a few dozen repetitions of the overall process—which took a few days—FunSearch was able to come up with code that produced a correct and previously unknown solution to the cap set problem, which involves finding the largest size of a certain type of set. Imagine plotting dots on graph paper. The cap set problem is like trying to figure out how many dots you can put down without three of them ever forming a straight line.

  • yesman@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    55·
    11 months ago

    I thought this was interesting bc it’s an instance where a LLM has done something undeniably novel and unique while expanding human understanding. It’s a chink in the armor of the idea that a LLM is a “stochastic parrot” that can only regurgitate and never create.

    I’ve been toying with this idea that LLM are showing us that what we thought of as creativity, learning, and problem solving aren’t as rarefied as we thought. We know that AI isn’t conscious, maybe consciousness isn’t as prerequisite to behaviors and cognition as we thought.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      I’m not so sure, it feels a lot more like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem, but with a model helping limit the outputs so they are mostly usable. As is stated in the article, it took millions of runs and couple of days to get the results. So its more like brute forcing with a slightly modified genetic algorithm than anything else.

      I didn’t see a link to the full article, so maybe something more creative is happening behind the scenes, but it seems unlikely.