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LazyHater t1_ixj3e2t wrote

Reply to comment by Matsarj in [R] Category Theory for AI,AI for Category theory by FresckleFart19

Resources are quite scarce I'm afraid. Emily Riehl and company are working on (inf,1) categories to establish homotopy between derived functors, for applications in univalent foundations. For a computer algebra system or proof assistant, type equivalence is required to abstract away implementation details. To actually compute homotopy equivalence, it's better to compute cohomology equivalence, but simplicial cohomology is often too expensive to compute. So it's an open problem whether we can optimize a derived homology functor between a derived (enriched) functor and an abelian (enriched) category (which still lacks proper definition afaik). But its a goal I heard at a HoTT talk once to get non-simplicial cohomology of types instead of computing homotopy (which is computationally impossible at scale). Feel free to steal and spread this idea but it's kinda original and speculative.

tl;dr application is computing homotopy equivalence of types at a reasonable expense

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Matsarj t1_ixjliwb wrote

So I'm pretty familiar with homotopy theory but don't know any type theory, homotopy or otherwise. What does determining whether types are homotopy equivalent get you in terms of ML applications?

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LazyHater t1_ixjq0v8 wrote

In "laymans" terms, it gives you a) an environment for ML models to verify their proofs and b) and rich space for ML to study relations between different fields of mathematics, logic, philosophy, ethics, and everything else by default at that point.

propositions are implementations of types so just being able to say when propositions are equivalent in like a rigorous way is good for science anyways.

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Phoneaccount25732 t1_iybqxxl wrote

Does category theory continue to be as insanely mind-blowing once you actually understand some of it?

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LazyHater t1_iyeaom6 wrote

Yes and no. The fundamental ideas, once they start to sink in, show clear parallels between vastly different fields of analytic thought. The more you understand the framework though, the more its limitations can be concerning. Dependence on the axiom of choice, for example, and the naturality of choice in the field itself, leads some to speculate that if contradiction can be chosen true, the theory's implementation (with the vast majority of categorical proofs appealing to choice) is completely broken.

It's overwhelming at times how applicable category theory is from the right perspective, but underwhelming how its implementation in set theory can be expected to pan out.

tl;dr: category theory is dope but aoc is sus

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