"The path to a superhuman AI mathematician."

"Mathematics is the first place where evidence of AI superintelligence is likely to appear, a theoretical computer scientist says."

"Imagine the set of all possible math theorems; only a subset has been proven by human mathematicians. 'A superhuman AI mathematician is one that can prove more theorems than humans have,' said theoretical computer scientist professor Sanjeev Arora from Princeton University."

"Arora, who was awarded the 2011 ACM Prize in Computing for his contributions to computational complexity, algorithms, and optimization, sketched a possible path to a superhuman AI mathematician. He explained that the idea traces back to David Hilbert's early 20th-century dream of automating mathematics. That dream was crushed by the work of Gödel, Turing, and Church, yet it left behind something lasting: the concept of formal proof verification -- the notion that mathematical proofs can be written in a precise language and then rigorously checked by a computer."

"The idea of self-improvement is that you give the AI a large question bank created by humans; it follows many attempts to answer these questions, and the correct answers are used for further training."

"How does it get the correct ones? That's the human feedback. Some humans have labeled them as correct answers. This is the present pipeline. But in math, you can verify the answer with Lean. So, if you just ask AI to produce its proofs in Lean, labeling the correct answers can be done automatically. Even if it is a long proof, we humans can trust that it is correct."

Commentary: Hmm seems plausible. I don't know enough about Lean and other mathematical theorem provers.

The path to a superhuman AI mathematician

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"Over the last few years, Y Combinator has gone through two major transformations at the same time: the AI revolution & Garry Tan returning to YC as President & CEO."

"Since Garry took over in 2023, YC founders have gotten much younger. The average age of founders had been holding steady around ~29 years since 2015, but now it stands at ~26 years and falling."

"I think this is for two reasons: 1) Garry has generally been refocusing YC on what made it successful in the first place, and 2) whenever there is a major technology platform shift underway like AI, the balance of power between youthfulness and experience tends to shift in favor of the former."

"I" here is Jared Heyman.

"The age cohorts of YC founders that have been growing the fastest in recent years are the youngest, and for the first time the past decade, there are more YC founders under the age of 25 years than over!"

"YC founders are also nerdier. At Rebel Fund, we use AI to divide founders into 'technical' vs 'non-technical' backgrounds, and the 'technical' group has really taken over since 2023 -- another return to YC's historical roots."

"More YC founders graduated from top universities than ever in recent years. For the first time last year, more than half of YC founders graduated from a top 20 university."

"In recent years, nearly half of YC founders have worked at a top 20 employer vs only ~25% a decade ago."

"Since Garry took the helm, average YC founder personality profiles have shifted, with much lower levels of Dominance and higher levels of Conscientiousness."

Note "Dominance" and "Conscientiousness" here are references to the DISC personality traits model (which is probably why they're capitalized). DISC stands for "Dominance", "Influence", "Steadiness", "Conscientiousness". If you've heard of the Big Five or HEXACO personalities models, what's different about DISC is that it is supposed to describe how people interact in a workplace environment, not be a general personality model. (Link below if you want to know more.)

"We can also observe Garry's bias towards community-building, with a massive leap in 2023 in the percentage of YC founders who had previously worked at a YC startup."

"There has been a huge increase in the proportion of YC startups located in the Bay, now approaching 85%!"

"So in short, YC has become 'more YC' than ever, with a refocus on young, technical, pedigreed, Silicon Valley-based founders."

Commentary: What I find interesting is that with software engineers, what I constantly hear is that new college graduates and "junior" engineers have it the worst and the industry has demand for "senior" engineers, yet here we see the exact opposite, "whenever there is a major technology platform shift underway like AI, the balance of power between youthfulness and experience tends to shift in favor of the former", and "the age cohorts of YC founders that have been growing the fastest in recent years are the youngest, and for the first time the past decade, there are more YC founders under the age of 25 years than over!"

On the 'new' Y Combinator

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