zlacker

>>nl+(OP)
The overhyped tweet from the robinhood guy raising money for his AI startup is nicely brought into better perspective by Thomas Bloom (including that #124 is not from the cited paper, "Complete sequences of sets of integer powers "/BEGL96):

> This is a nice solution, and impressive to be found by AI, although the proof is (in hindsight) very simple, and the surprising thing is that Erdos missed it. But there is definitely precedent for Erdos missing easy solutions!

> Also this is not the problem as posed in that paper

> That paper asks a harder version of this problem. The problem which has been solved was asked by Erdos in a couple of later papers.

> One also needs to be careful about saying things like 'open for 30 years'. This does not mean it has resisted 30 years of efforts to solve it! Many Erdos problems (including this one) have just been forgotten about it, and nobody has seriously tried to solve it.[1]

And, indeed, Boris Alexeev (who ran the problem) agrees:

> My summary is that Aristotle solved "a" version of this problem (indeed, with an olympiad-style proof), but not "the" version.

> I agree that the [BEGL96] problem is still open (for now!), and your plan to keep this problem open by changing the statement is reasonable. Alternatively, one could add another problem and link them. I have no preference.[2]

Not to rain on the parade out of spite, it's just that this is neat, but not like, unusually neat compared to the last few months.

[1] https://twitter.com/thomasfbloom/status/1995083348201586965

[2] https://www.erdosproblems.com/forum/thread/124#post-1899

>>magica+Ao2
See this is one of the reasons I struggle to get on board the AI hype train. Any time I've seen some breathless claim about it's capabilities that feels a bit too good to be true, someone with knowledge in the domain takes a closer look and it turns out to have been exaggerated and meant to draw eyeballs and investors to some fledgling AI company.

I just feel like if we were genuinely on the cusp of an AI revolution like it is claimed, we wouldn't need to keep seeing this sort of thing. Like I feel like a lot of the industry is full of flim-flam men trying to scam people, and if the tech was as capable as we keep getting told it is there'd be no need for dishonesty or sleight of hand.

>>smcl+Db3
The crypto train kinda ran out of steam, so all aboard the AI train.

That being said, I think AI has a lot more immediately useful cases than cryptocurrency. But it does feel a bit overhyped by people who stand to gain a tremendous amount of money.

I might get slammed/downvoted on HN for this, but really wondering how much of VC is filled with get-rich-quick cheerleading vs supporting products that will create strong and lasting growth.

>>jimkle+tc3
I don't think you really need to wonder about how much is cheer leading. Effectively all of VC public statements will be cheer leading for companies they already invested in.

The more interesting one is the closed door conversations. Earlier this year, for example, it seemed there was a pattern of VCs heavily invested in AI asking the other software companies they invested in to figure out how to make AI useful for them and report back. I.e. "we invested heavily in hype, tell us how to make it real."