Import AI 478: Math for alignment; ProgramBench; and Mirendil shows what RSI means

Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on arXiv, cappuccinos, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this, please subscribe. How math could help alignment:…What the “industrialization of mathematics” means for safety…AI safety startup Resolution (formerly known as Sequent, Import AI 461) has published work on how it has automatically formalized some mathematical statements related to statistical learning theory. Specifically, the team has autoformalized the resolution of singularities, which they believe “lays the groundwork for further automated research into the relationship between loss landscape geometry and generalization.” How they did it: I’ll skip over the math and concentrate on how they did it, which gives us some broader lessons for how people are using AI systems to push on the frontier of knowledge. A Resolution researcher “started by working with agents to develop two plans: a high-level, human-interpretable version and a detailed (112-page) plan divided into atomic steps that closely followed the existing literature,” they write. The researcher “then deputized an orchestrator agent to carry out the plan, spinning up agents to do pen-and-paper math, write Lean, and handle support functions like checking that things were staying on track… the execution phase required…