Grant Sanderson – AI and the future of math
Always so much fun to chat with Grant.
AI has been making much faster progress in math than in other fields. As a result, mathematics is showing us, very concretely, what AI progress in other fields will look like. Even within mathematics, there’s a jagged landscape. What does it look like?
What is the nature of the most important conceptual breakthroughs in the history of mathematics, and how different are they from what AIs are currently able to do?
Does AI (on net) increase or decrease human understanding of the field?
How big is the overhang from having AIs systematically try to connect ideas already in the literature?
And what advice does Grant have for aspiring mathematicians, coders, and other students who are passionate about fields that are being most transformed upon by AI?
Watch on YouTube; read the transcript.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) – AI is discovering new proofs. Is that AGI?
(00:11:32) – The verification loop on conceptual breakthroughs can be a century long
(00:26:12) – Will we understand an AI proof of the Riemann hypothesis?
(00:38:08) – Can AI find the hidden bridges between fields?
(00:53:48) – Why real-world tasks don’t fit into RL environments
(01:07:07) – Good writing requires theory of mind that AI still lacks
(01:16:02) – Why learning will still depend on human curation
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Grant Sanderson (@3blue1brown) — Past, present, & future of mathematics
I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel) about:
- Whether advanced math requires AGI
- What careers should mathematically talented students pursue
- Why Grant plans on doing a stint as a high school teacher
- Tips for self teaching
- Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem actually matter
- Why are good explanations so hard to find?
- And much more
Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform. Full transcript here.
Timestamps
(0:00:00) - Does winning math competitions require AGI?
(0:08:24) - Where to allocate mathematical talent?
(0:17:34) - Grant’s miracle year
(0:26:44) - Prehistoric humans and math
(0:33:33) - Why is a lot of math so new?
(0:44:44) - Future of education
(0:56:28) - Math helped me realize I wasn’t that smart
(0:59:25) - Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem matter?
(1:05:12) - How Grant makes videos
(1:10:13) - Grant’s math exposition competition
(1:20:44) - Self teaching
Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe
#118 – Grant Sanderson: Math, Manim, Neural Networks & Teaching with 3Blue1Brown
Grant Sanderson is a math educator and creator of 3Blue1Brown.
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Episode links:
3Blue1Brown: http://youtube.com/3blue1brown
Grant’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/3blue1brown
If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/podcast or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.
Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
05:13 – Richard Feynman
09:41 – Learning deeply vs broadly
13:56 – Telling a story with visualizations
18:43 – Topology
23:52 – Intuition about exponential growth
32:28 – Elon Musk’s exponential view of the world
40:09 – SpaceX and space exploration
45:28 – Origins of the Internet
49:50 – Does teaching on YouTube get lonely?
54:31 – Daily routine
1:00:20 – Social media
1:10:38 – Online education in a time of COVID
1:27:03 – Joe Rogan moving to Spotify
1:32:09 – Neural networks
1:38:30 – GPT-3
1:46:52 – Manim
1:51:01 – Python
1:56:21 – Theory of everything
2:03:53 – Meaning of life
Grant Sanderson: 3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics
Grant Sanderson is a math educator and creator of 3Blue1Brown, a popular YouTube channel that uses programmatically-animated visualizations to explain concepts in linear algebra, calculus, and other fields of mathematics.
This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.
This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (App Store, Google Play), use code “LexPodcast”.
Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
00:00 – Introduction
01:56 – What kind of math would aliens have?
03:48 – Euler’s identity and the least favorite piece of notation
10:31 – Is math discovered or invented?
14:30 – Difference between physics and math
17:24 – Why is reality compressible into simple equations?
21:44 – Are we living in a simulation?
26:27 – Infinity and abstractions
35:48 – Most beautiful idea in mathematics
41:32 – Favorite video to create
45:04 – Video creation process
50:04 – Euler identity
51:47 – Mortality and meaning
55:16 – How do you know when a video is done?
56:18 – What is the best way to learn math for beginners?
59:17 – Happy moment