Ananyo Bhattacharya

Chief science writer @London_Inst. 'The Man from the Future', on the unparalleled influence of John von Neumann, available everywhere. For my substack see link.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

Our @Nature comment this week on the use of AI in maths and theoretical physics - and why the community should embrace it!
Authors @London_Inst & @GoogleDeepMind.
First draft 8 months ago but edited many times as the field steamed ahead!
Free-to-read link at the end of 🧵1/

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

As Sabine says, interesting areas of maths are not cooked but there's tremendous opportunities to grab many low-hanging fruit (if these models actually become widely available at prices any mathematician can afford!).

[Sabine Hossenfelder @skdh]

AI's recent maths breakthrough and how mathematicians are reacting

https://t.co/X8jjRVmYld

[Laura Ryan @Lyan82]

🚨Today we launch Reorganising Research – a @sci_works initiative to chart what mix of organisational forms British science needs & how to get there.

Lots to come, but we're kicking off with two open calls: a call for evidence with @wellcometrust, & a £3000 essay prize... 🧵

[Scott Kominers @skominers]

In the last week, multiple colleagues have expressed concern that generative AI will somehow destroy society's esteem for mathematics and mathematicians.

Contrariwise, I conjecture the opposite. I've never seen the level of public fascination with math that we're seeing right now — weekly articles in major outlets; people outside the field teaching themselves arithmetic combinatorics; heck, even the owner of a local café recently asked me to explain the unit distance conjecture.

If anything, this seems likely to renew students' excitement, uncover new applications, and open new frontiers — all of which should inure to the benefit of the field and of mathematicians.

QED?

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh Oh I wrote this about Strevens as an overview of what I got from it https://t.co/ptdxqTy3Vg

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

Never ceases to amaze or depress me what passes for wisdom on this platform. For instance, smart guy says science isn't a process, then outlines one in the next sentence. Still, gotta love it, no?
For two interesting views on this try Strevens
https://t.co/c0xKRGEvQh and..

[Naval @naval]

Science is not a process, a credential, or an institution.

It is the unflinching pursuit of truth, carried out by the few, co-opted by the many.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh Yes but you see you’ve made a qualitative judgement that would have been alien a few hundred years ago. Anyway— think you’ll enjoy Strevens. I’m getting through the Wootton. Also v good and antidote to other histories steeped in relativism.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh …and I suspect others too who have done research. At least experimentalists.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh Strevens argues it is successful at least in large part BECAUSE it disallowed certain kinds of knowledge. What he calls the ‘iron rule’. It’s a strange somewhat reductionistic type of thinking —that’s been profoundly successful. What Strevens argues chimes with my experience…

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh Assumption being they must be insightful on areas that, actually, they don't have a lot of expertise on. Vibes prioritised over genuine insight which comes from engaging with previous efforts and building on that.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh There's much more to it than that. A key part of it is what type of knowledge is allowed for instance. Not convinced that Naval's tweet is insightful. There's a temptation on X to validate wealthy folk's views. After all, they've made money. Who doesn't want to be rich?

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh …there’s clearly a very different way of seeking knowledge than before. There’s a minimalistic focus on observation, arguments that are not permitted, and a growing body of published work.etc etc Science progresses and is reproducible in ways that other knowledge seeking isn’t.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@BSeradjeh To expand eg Feyerabend argued that there was no method and the process was chaotic. This was 1975. Don’t find this convincing. If ‘no method’ then what is it and what changed? Fundamentally different way of ‘seeking truth’ to before. Strevens argues contra…

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

...Wootton's The Invention of Science https://t.co/uNwh9tbx0m

[London Institute for Mathematical Sciences @London_Inst]

Without string theory, extra dimensions, inflation and other recent ideas, can we explain cosmological mysteries like dark matter and account for the universe’s large-scale structure? Prof. Neil Turok believes his minimal paradigm could.
His colloquium: https://t.co/wUBvWpMrc3

[Alvaro Lozano-Robledo @mathandcobb]

You may be able to ask Mythos if "the image of an ell-adic Galois representation attached to an specific abelian variety with complex multiplication is surjective onto the maximal subgroup of Aut(T_ell(A)) allowed by its CM" but what good would an answer be if you don't know what any of these words mean? How would you formulate such a question in the first place?

What you call "high priests" are people who have dedicated their lives to understand extremely technical fields. If AI systems lower the entry bar and students are able to understand what these words mean faster, we would all welcome that.

But if you are going to produce quick AI answers that you yourself do not understand, and expect *us* to verify them for you, then that's not how any of this works or should work.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

This aged well.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@PeterMorganQF @duda_jarek That’s a good spot thank you.

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

Right at the end of my interview with Neil Turok, an audience member asked him if he believed in God, prompting this heartfelt paeon on why doing theoretical physics is a "profound privilege". https://t.co/tG89OTamHo

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

@duda_jarek Yep! Posted yesterday afternoon. Proving popular!