Tim Gowers: What sort of maths are LLMs good at?

A thoughtful and measured post, as usual from Gowers. The final note is neat and worth pasting out here in full:

> A good sign that LLMs have reached human level for a much wider class of problems will be if they start proving theorems using methods that, like much of the very best human mathematics, are new and surprising but that with hindsight come to seem beautiful and natural. They should also be methods that are difficult to stumble on by accident. It is hard to say precisely what would count as such a proof, but I think we’ll recognise it when we see it.

How interesting is it that in the same way the human brain unconsciously does calculus and linear algebra, but struggles in the conscious space (we have to go learn it, it’s not easy) the same is true of LLMs.

They are algebra, and yet kinda suck at it without training