I'm disappointed but not surprised that mathematicians seem to be debating primarily between (1) the purpose of humans doing math is to understand math (thus it's important not to use too much AI) and (2) the purpose of humans doing math is to prove theorems about math (and if AI can do it instead that's fine). These are both totally circular and give no one else a reason to care.
It's fine for individuals to be motivated by curiosity or glory, but I think the probably incorrect on the individual motivation level idea that "we do math because it often turns out to be useful for other things; sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes not" is better if you want to argue why others (usually a government) should be paying for professional mathematicians. Otherwise, it's just a hobby and no one who isn't a mathematician should care if AI replaces 99.99% of professional mathematicians.
I hope AI causes enough of a shock to the field that more mathematicians become interested in finding problems outside of mathematics that can be modeled by problems with known solutions in mathematics and what sort of problems outside of mathematics suggest new mathematical problems. This is a real bottleneck in both directions in scientific and engineering work. Although AI can help with this, my experience with software, math, and science is it helps a lot to have a human in the loop who understands what to ask the AI to do and who are able to dig into the AI output when needed.
slowking2 · · focus · HN ↗
It's fine for individuals to be motivated by curiosity or glory, but I think the probably incorrect on the individual motivation level idea that "we do math because it often turns out to be useful for other things; sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes not" is better if you want to argue why others (usually a government) should be paying for professional mathematicians. Otherwise, it's just a hobby and no one who isn't a mathematician should care if AI replaces 99.99% of professional mathematicians.
I hope AI causes enough of a shock to the field that more mathematicians become interested in finding problems outside of mathematics that can be modeled by problems with known solutions in mathematics and what sort of problems outside of mathematics suggest new mathematical problems. This is a real bottleneck in both directions in scientific and engineering work. Although AI can help with this, my experience with software, math, and science is it helps a lot to have a human in the loop who understands what to ask the AI to do and who are able to dig into the AI output when needed.