TheSequence
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5 hours ago
DeepSeek generated 800,000 worked solutions from its R1 reasoning model and fine-tuned smaller models on these step-by-step traces using standard supervised learning, achieving unexpected success without reinforcement learning or other advanced techniques. The distilled 32B model solved competition math problems significantly harder than expected for its size, while the 7B model developed emergent reasoning abilities like self-verification without explicit training. The approach challenges prior consensus that naive sequence-level imitation cannot work because student models diverge from teacher trajectories at inference time, suggesting that learning from reasoning traces may operate under different principles than simple answer imitation.
TLDR
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6 hours ago
Researchers built an agent swarm system that decomposes complex tasks into hierarchical trees with planner agents (using capable models) delegating to worker agents (using cheaper, faster models), then tested it on implementing SQLite in Rust from documentation. The new swarm reached 80% test pass rate in four hours using Grok 4.5, compared to the old system's collapse before hour two on the same task. The system uses specialized coordination mechanisms—custom version control handling 1,000 commits per second, design docs with compile-checked references, third-party merge conflict resolution, and stacked review lenses—enabling productive multi-agent collaboration at scales where single agents drift or human coordination breaks down.
TLDR
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6 hours ago
AI models have disproven three major mathematical conjectures in recent weeks: ChatGPT refuted Erdős' Unit Distance conjecture, OpenAI's Sol found a counterexample to Grothendieck's 60-year-old question about group schemes, and Claude found a counterexample to the century-old Jacobian Conjecture. The achievements range from 1.2 million lines of Lean code for the Erdős proof down to 1,076 lines for the Grothendieck counterexample, with formalization times measured in days or weeks. Mathematicians are now considering AI tools essential for research, with some institutions offering free access to PhD students and faculty, fundamentally shifting how mathematical discovery and verification happen.
