alt Hacker NewsIs it new? I'm getting mixed messages from the posts here. On one side there is evidence that 48 and 46 multiplication solutions have been known (and could have found themselves in the model training data).
On the other side I see excitement that the singularity is here.
If the latter were the case surely we wouldn't be reading about it in a published paper, we would already know.
Let's assume that the 46 multiplication algorithm was known, prior to AlphaEvolve re-discovering it. AlphaEvolve still has made an improvement to a performance critical area that has had likely had thousands of engineer-hours put into it. None of those engineers apparently knew about the improved algorithm, or were able to implement the algorithm. This is empirical evidence of an LLM outperforming its (domain expert) human counterparts.