Researchers Debate Why AI Cracks Math First, Not Software Engineering
Professor Dimitris Papailiopoulos and researcher Ofir Press debated AI research breakthroughs: software engineering lacks math-style open problems, while measurable milestones could include rewriting ffmpeg or sqlite 5x faster with half the memory, as autoresearch already beats SOTA on MNIST compression by 2-3x.
2026-10-07 ~ 2026-10-07 · 4 related posts
- Ofir Press on Nobel-Level Coding AI: Rewriting FFmpeg or SQLite 5x Faster Could Be the Benchmark — OfirPress · 2026-10-07
- Ofir Press: rewriting ffmpeg or sqlite 5x faster with 2x less memory as an AI benchmark — OfirPress · 2026-10-07
- AI autoresearch compresses MNIST classifiers 2-3x better than SOTA — DimitrisPapail · 2026-10-07
- Professor argues SWE lacks math-style open problems—yet AI models still crush 'solved' tasks — DimitrisPapail · 2026-10-07