The Math Legend Who Just Left Academia–For an AI Startup Run by a 24-Year-Old

I wonder if this is like when Thinking Machines Corporation hired Richard Feynman mostly to get a little clout. They didn't have a lot for him to do, and he thought they were a bunch of naive kids with an idea that would never work in the real world but had a fat pocketbook. In the end he was able to mathematically prove that they could safely do a hardware optimization, but they didn't believe him and tried to overprovision instead, but late in the design they ran short of transistors and had to trust his math. It worked, but the machine was still mostly useless even when it did work properly.

For anyone else who can't see the article:

> University of Virginia professor Ken Ono, one of the world's most prominent mathematicians, joins AI startup Axiom Math, which is building an “AI mathematician”

Unlocked gift article: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/math-ken-ono-carina-hong-axiom-s...

I have no idea what he's planning to do, but this kind of thing just now becoming feasible.

I get the impression doing something like the title is a dream of many Chinese AI researchers, and why we [edit:see] them focusing on things like the mathematics competition datasets. I am slightly in this direction myself.

Honestly I can't fault people of joining the gold rush, while it is still red hot. Generational amounts of money is being made in a very short time.

Can anyone remember a VC startup that announced they'd implement a complex product that is essentially research, got a lot of capital and then succeeded?

Truly complex novel products are made in secrecy. If you announce something, you want to cash in on the hype.

It’s almost like tech world pays more and has less bullshit than academia

Interesting, seems wsj does not allow archive.is through their paywall

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Any predictions on When the rizz and swagger of AI wears off and gets replaced by the next fad?