> So the (PCI-E) bandwidth strongly affects time to first token
On dedicated inference hardware I'd expect model weights to never leave the RAM, and you'd probably load them on startup before even starting to serve requests
That's probably a bit pedantic. Whether you draw a magic line with dinosaurs on one side and (avian) dinosaurs/birds on the other or just say that birds continued on from the avian dinosaur clade is pretty definitional.
I do. But the difference is: do I go around bragging that my agent worked for 88h to solve a problem? Where is the credit coming from? Is it coming from the: I was the first one to think about throwing a prompt: "Solve Riemann Hypothesis" and it turns out that by luck of the non-deterministic behavior of the agent, it got right? Wow, that is a lot of merit really. Congrats...
Sorry the sarcasm, but really your point makes absolutely no sense.
It is completely different to design something with AI and then execute, validate, evolve vs just prompt it machine-g-brrrr style and get a result.
This brings an important question. Nowadays I don't write code, I review code, I review systems behavior and get paid for it. Will that be the same for math researchers? Their prompt/problem is already well-posed out there. Ours, in the day-to-day, are not. Will the first one to verify AI work get the credit? or is it going to be the dumdum that types a simple prompt and has the compute to run it for 21321 hours? I absolutely don't get your point here. Or you are just rage baiting
It is a strong argument in this case though, because Terence Taos expertise is directly linked to his ability to not misstate the history of mathematics.
Also note how the quote by Tao is in all likelyhood not meant as an absolute; rather than a statement of a trend - a handfull of counterexamples do I no way change anything about the truth value of Tao's quote.
On the other heand; consider how absurd it would be if "... in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community, which would reverse centuries of traditions of open science ..." would indeed be a misstatement; which would imply that far more promising research directions were not shared with the broader community (i.e.: published). I wonder what different reading of that counterfactual there could be other than secret societies that kept their discoveries and research directions to themselves - which we just learned about (since we would otherwise not be refering to the secret societies and their supposed promising research directions).
All pretty straightforward, I would say - both that "misstatement" is hopefully based an overly strict reading of Tao's quote, and that mentioning Tao's background as one of the fields leading practitioners is relevant as well. Again; to make sure: A few counterexamples achieves nothing here. It would need to reach a certain threshold of such counterexamples before we will have to write the history of mathematics; and before Tao actually made a misstatement here.
I mean mathematics has enough history that something can both have been false for centuries of mathematics research and true for centuries. Sometimes in different places simultaneously.
Terrence Tao can do his job perfectly well without being aware of any mathematical history, though I consider it unlikely that he is. I'm not seeing the direct link you're talking about, in fact history is frequently left out of mathematical teaching even when the history would in fact help in the understanding of some concepts.
> in fact history is frequently left out of mathematical teaching even when the history would in fact help in the understanding of some concepts.
That is well-known I assumed and continue to assume.
> I'm not seeing the direct link you're talking about
You are stating that link yourself; indirectly: "though I consider it unlikely that he is [being unaware of any mathematical history]". Why is it unlikely, precisely?
- Maybe because it is unlikely that he recieved the mathematical teaching that frequently does not contain history of mathematics (wild! I wonder which university you have in mind in particular) that you seem to be refering to?
- Or maybe because he is quite the opposite of a person that never ventures outside of their own area; being blind for other fields, or ones own history; as evidence by being famously collaborative across different fields, having a popular blog where he writes about non-mathematical topics too and last; him being one of the main proponents of foundational topics such as formalization of mathematics; or the use of LLMs for mathematical research.
Does all that really make it more likely to you that Tao is not aware of the existence of counterexamples like those the commenter above mentioned - more likely than the commenter simply having missed a nuance or taking something out of context?
If so; I would be genuinely curious why - people work differently, and I am always happy to learn, or close gaps in my own understanding.
Any one of the arguments you make here is already stronger than the original one. The problems with appeals to authority isn't that they are always false, it's that they are not a good argument.
And you say his "expertise is directly linked to his ability to not misstate the history of mathematics". And frankly, I disagree. If he happened to be misguided or even outright wrong about some parts of mathematical history I wouldn't think any less of him, nor do I think it matters much for the work he's actually paid to do. At worst it would result in an online discussion, which is arguably a good outcome not a bad outcome.
And the other an appeal to tradition. There was only one Gauss to scoop and focusing on him misses the larger math culture which Terry might be aware of, where most trust others to not scoop.
And if any mathematician's AI usage on a problem leads to scooping, the volume of agents involved gives them a huge advantage which could prompt mathematicians to not use LLMs.
Though you can say Terry's claim is a slippery slope.
So let me get this straight: you're saying that Terrence Tao, one of the most prominent mathematicians alive today, doesn't know math history? And me pointing this out is merely an appeal to authority?
> Terrence Tao, one of the most prominent mathematicians alive today, doesn't know math history?
If Tao has a knowledge of the topic (which he does), then it isn't by virtue of being a mathematician per se, but by virtue of an interest in the history of mathematics (which he has). Knowledge of math is enormously helpful here, but it does not imply historical knowledge.
> Soldiers rarely know the history of war, and war historians are rarely soldiers.
I mean, besides the empty platitude that we have no reason to assume applies here, we can easily search and find Tao commenting on the history and philosophy of mathematics.
It's not at all empty. Specific expertise does not imply general knowledge, and shouldn't be assumed.
"Commenting on" does not equal historian of mathematics aware of all the past politics and drama from 100 years ago. There's no reason to assume an expert in applied mathematics is also a historian, especially when their statements are somewhat in conflict with history. And, there's nothing wrong with that, if they have a knowledge gap in some boring past bickering when they're one of the best in the world at what they do, ffs.
Knowing the math that was developed through history, and knowing how that math was developed and the circumstances around it are two fundamentally different things.
Clearly Tao knows the former, but apriori that does not imply he knows the latter.
Not saying he doesn't, just saying one does not imply the other.
Even if you go back and read the original papers, you'll miss all that which happened beyond the page.
"Intrusive" may be a C++ speak, but I wouldn't say that one or the other type of lists is necessarily much older or more "normal". After all, a cons cell embeds data and not the other way around and lisp is one of the oldest programming languages in existence
What makes the front wheel brake a bad idea? I almost exclusively use the front brake, because that's the one that'll actually stop me. (Source: when I used rim brakes I had to replace the front brake pad three times for every time I replaced the rear brake pad.)
I know some people use the rear wheel locking up as a way to sense when they have applied enough front brake, but that's not necessary. It's also possible to learn to sense that directly.
When going at a high speed, breaking hard with the front wheel alone can force the bike to rotate around it and the rider might enjoy a very short but very thrilling flight. Which I learned the hard way many years ago
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