AI and Mathematics, from Beijing – #123

Special episode recorded in Beijing. Steve discusses the future of mathematics in light of recent AI breakthroughs, the state of AI in China, and some thoughts on China's innovation economy.

Chapter Markers:

• (00:00) - Beijing walk
• (03:44) - OpenAI Shocks Math World
• (07:11) - Will Humans Quit Math
• (11:01) - Tao Versus Yau Visions
• (12:38) - Building Hard Math Data
• (13:56) - China AI Ecosystem, US AI bubble and P (Doom)
• (15:58) - US-China AI competition
• (21:52) - Hangzhou meeting and financial markets

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Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to [email protected] or Steve on X @hsu_steve.

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Research Engineer, Alignment: Build evals that test for misaligned model behaviors $500K salary

Puzzle Maker: Design interesting and original puzzles that LLMs can’t yet solve $300K salary

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