Simons Foundation launches $15M effort to help mathematicians navigate AI era

I think a lot about how Terrence Tao and the usual 30 (already well-funded) math guys will receive this cash while us early-career math students are left holding the bag.

It's akin somewhat to "donating 100 dollars to the node JS foundation, not the packages that appear when you run npm fund".

> Under a partnership, the Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI will commit $15 million in combined funding and resources. The foundation will manage and award the funding, including through an open call for proposals, to support workshops and initiatives that help researchers evaluate recent AI-assisted results, learn and use new tools, share perspectives and shape collective standards for AI use.

The foundation was started in 1994, Wikipedia says "one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States with assets of over $5 billion in 2022" - Jim Simons founded the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund.

> > Under a partnership, the Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI will commit $15 million in combined funding and resources.

OAI and Ant got blowback for essentially strip mining mathematical discoveries into PR wins for their models, accidentally laying waste to the research field in process. Throwing ~$5M each into PR whitewashing (partially in token credits), seems self-serving.

Kudos to the Simons Foundation for seizing the moment to offer the labs a fig leaf of respectability. Might have been the fastest "Yes" on a grant proposal ever.

My effort to help scientists navigate the AI era:

On ChatGPT: Settings -> Data controls -> Turn off “Improve model for everyone”

On Claude: Settings -> Privacy -> Turn off “Help improve our AI models”

They can scrape your work after you publish it.

So they want mathematicians to keep prompting and giving feedback to the models for clarifications on their proofs. Then write it all up and publish it in a journal and mention their AI usage. Then suddenly the models end up producing readable and understandable proofs through the "emergence" of the skills because of the scaling laws.

This is the first time I hear of a group receiving founding to navigate AI era. Why this one and not all the others that have to adapt to the AI era?

(Yes I know it's not the group directly receiving the founding)

I really can't empathize with treating mathematicians as some sort of AI refugees who need coddling and support. AI is a tool, and competent mathematicians should learn to use it like everyone else. I find it hard to believe that AI doesn't represent a net potential benefit to human understanding of mathematics. Yes it can be misused, but any tool can be misused. Just don't misuse it...

Is mathematics deprived of the associated knowledge that comes from a human first deriving a proof, how exploring the problem domain including the dead-ends has changed the mathematician's thinking, when a proof is given by AI? It seems that the solving rather than just the solution gave much to mathematics.

Can you explain to me what "navigation" means if AI actually succeeds at automating mathematics? Or is the bet here that the AI companies will fail to deliver?

15M really is not a big commitment tbh... university take half, then there is not much left; it can maybe fund <10 groups.

So $15M of OpenAI/Anthropic tokens, won't this just encourage more model use that started the "issue" in the first place?

This is the "democratization" in practice. Top pro-AI mathematicians will get the spoils.

Wonder if they realize these types of things help grow massive resentment against such companies? I'm astounded by how terrible the politics of SV actually is.

Lol. I would say these guys made bad life/career choices. They can take care of themselves.

Aside from the fact that $15M is couch change for these companies, and aside from the fact that this project is hypocritical and self-serving (as explained by many other posts), the whole idea of naming a supposedly large sum of money in a headline in order to impress is just silly. Whether a project is successful or worthwhile has little to do with how much funding may be lined up, and throwing numbers around is often just a smokescreen for poor planning and execution.

They try to transform mathematics to a charity. How generous!!!

i think tokens for any scientists should be free.

"One of the foundations responsible for the AI mess bribes mathematicians to accelerate AI."

How shameless can you be?