"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law
"Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect." -- Teller (of Penn & Teller)
"Sometimes, any sufficiently advanced technology is just spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect." -- an LLM's original thought, probably
That's really what's going on here, I think. LLMs aren't that good at math or have deep mathematical insight. They just automate "try shit until something sticks" at scale, which, as it turns out, is a pretty decent way to turn out a bunch of math papers.
LLMs have enabled brute forcing of math in a way that classical computing somehow has not, which is fascinating in and of itself.
"Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect." -- Teller (of Penn & Teller)
"Sometimes, any sufficiently advanced technology is just spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect." -- an LLM's original thought, probably