최근 서울대 교수 56명이 해외 대학으로 ‘이탈’하였다는 기사와 함께 서울대의 인재유출이 우려할만하다는 여론이 형성되고 있습니다. 그런데 저는 기사들의 초점이 서울대 교수들의 부족한 연봉에만 있는 것이 조금 아쉽습니다. 저는 근본적인 문제가 조금 다른 포인트에 있다고 생각합니다. (1/N)
Ernest Ryu
534 posts
Ernest Ryu
@ErnestRyu
Assistant Professor at UCLA, Department of Mathematics. Research Scientist at OpenAI.
- Two cents on AI getting International Math Olympiad (IMO) Gold, from a mathematician. Background: Last year, Google DeepMind (GDM) got Silver in IMO 2024. This year, OpenAI solved problems P1-P5 for IMO 2025 (but not P6), and this performance corresponds to Gold. (1/10)
- This is really exciting and impressive, and this stuff is in my area of mathematics research (convex optimization). I have a nuanced take. 🧵 (1/9)Claim: gpt-5-pro can prove new interesting mathematics. Proof: I took a convex optimization paper with a clean open problem in it and asked gpt-5-pro to work on it. It proved a better bound than what is in the paper, and I checked the proof it's correct. Details below.
- I used ChatGPT to solve an open problem in convex optimization. *Part I* (1/N)
- Replying to @ErnestRyuThe proof is something an experienced PhD student could work out in a few hours. That GPT-5 can do it with just ~30 sec of human input is impressive and potentially very useful to the right user. However, GPT5 is by no means exceeding the capabilities of human experts. (9/9)
- I firmly believe we are at a watershed moment in the history of mathematics. In the coming years, using LLMs for math research will become mainstream, and so will Lean formalization, made easier by LLMs. (1/4)
- Your optimization algorithm is a circuit! In our NeurIPS 2024 Spotlight paper with Stephen Boyd, Tetiana Parshakova, Jaewook Suh @Jaewook_J_Suh, we present a framework for designing optimization algorithms using (electric) circuit theory. (Video and paper links in reply) (1/3)
- New lecture recordings on RL+LLM! 📺 This spring, I gave a lecture series titled **Reinforcement Learning of Large Language Models**. I have decided to re-record these lectures and share them on YouTube. (1/7)
- Replying to @ErnestRyuPart IV: 결론 해외의 우수 대학들은 마치 사기업처럼 필요한 인재를 뺏고 빼앗기는 자유시장 경쟁을 합니다. 서울대가 그들의 리그에 진입하고자 한다면, 그 경쟁에 응해야 합니다. (22/N, N=22)
- Replying to @ErnestRyu10. My career as a mathematician certainly isn't threatened by AI; in fact, I hope to leverage AI to accelerate my work. However, I'm unsure whether "mathematician" will remain a career path for my son’s generation. (10/10)
- Replying to @ErnestRyu8. Prediction: In the next decade, an increasing number of mathematicians will improve their productivity by using LLMs to search for known parts of a tentative proof outline. The old guard mathematicians may lament this, but the young folks will just go on to do good work.(8/10)
- Replying to @ErnestRyu6. I don’t think LLMs will replace mathematicians anytime soon. Math research is about solving problems *no one* yet knows how to solve (out-of-distribution), and this requires significant creativity, something notably absent from OpenAI’s IMO solutions. (6/10)
- Replying to @ErnestRyu7. However, LLMs will become exceedingly powerful for problems that *someone* knows how to solve (in-distribution, in training data). In math research, you combine existing techniques with new creative ideas. LLMs will significantly accelerate the former part. (7/10)
- Replying to @ErnestRyu이 56명이라는 숫자가 서울대에게 큰 손실로 느껴지는 이유는, 서울대가 반대로 해외 우수 대학의 교수를 recruiting 해 오는 일이 없기 때문입니다. (11/N)
