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New largest prime number discovered by former Nvidia software engineer (sherwood.news)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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According to GIMPS, this is the first time a prime number was not found by an ordinary PC, but rather a “‘cloud supercomputer’ spanning 17 countries” that utilized an Nvidia A100 GPU chip to make the initial diagnosis. The primary architect of this find is Luke Durant, who worked at Nvidia as a software engineer for 11 years

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It feels like people are celebrating this but hating on ai developments. not sure if these people are hypocritical or if that's two different groups of people.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Do you mean to say that this achievement had something to do with AI?

Fermat PRP testing with proofs instead of Lucas-Lehmer testing with full double checks

Looks like pure mathematics to me.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think they're comparing the huge amount of computing power used for both AI and finding primes.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago

Yes but when we use power to find new primes then we know them and can use them in cryptography, but if we use power on AI then we dilute current knowledge with fake knowledge. So it's a pretty stark contrast imo.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Primes are actually useful..

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Cryptography is moving away from primes. Given the theoretical danger of quantum computer over them.

Latices is what will theoretically be used in the future for cryptography.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Picking the largest known prime number feels like setting your password to password lol.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

You can dislike corporate hype around ai and celebrate someone finding a legitimate use case for ai.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah. Stuff like this, work in medical treatments and new drugs, I'm on board.

Using it to replace human workers or steal their hard work to train them?

Fuck you sideways with a cactus, you corporate fucks.