The main reason to learn something is actually being able to communicate in the language of that subject. There are complex ideas in math that cannot be easily captured by the language of other fields. Pepole who don't study math cannot even understand what a worthwhile goal in math even is or how it could be useful to other fields.

You can't simply prompt a model to be "better" when "better" isnt even properly defined

> To take on this responsibility, we may need to broaden our view of what a mathematician can contribute. I have in mind something like a “deployable intellectual reserve”: communities of mathematically sophisticated people that humanity can call upon to help understand consequential AI-enabled breakthroughs.

> Our ability to understand difficult and unfamiliar ideas may become one of the most important contributions we can offer to society. We should be willing to bring that skill to problems far beyond our usual research interests. [3] Doing so asks us to expand our sense of our vocation.

Am I reading this wrong, or is he talking about what (mathematitian) Data Scientists have been doing for years? So he is basically saying that former Data Scientist that have turned into prompt/software engineers should go back to being data scientists.

In any case, people should stop trying to fit AI in the previous status quo. What we need is curious people, that is what we have always needed.

A few centuries ago there were no "mathematitians", there were mathematitians/philosophers/artists/physicists all in one person. So its not like "mathematitias" is something that has existed for millenia.

We need curious and ethical people.

Maybe AI brings back the age of a well rounded scientist/philosopher. I know this sounds counter intuitive because the article is saying that we cannot keep up with the AI.

We're going to have people understand maths more now than ever before.

See proofs never before possible made by someones intuition.

But maybe they wont be mathematicians.

A lot of the conversations around AI in the past years have been “we will delegate almost all work to AI, but the most decisions will be left to humans.”

I’m fairly confident that the opposite will be true. The most important decisions will be made by AI, and humans will only be left to guide decisions as a matter of taste. AI has the ability to be impartial, and immutable. You can endlessly probe and reason its decisions.

This isn’t true of our current human decisions. Where we see red tape, bureaucracy, rent seeking, status quo. AI will see through these human constructs.

I do like the idea that we will need more mathematicians, physicists, and scientists to understand the discoveries of AI. That might be the best possible outcome of AI, but I fear the opposite and we are painting ourselves into a corner of which we no longer have the knowledge to sustain ourselves and society itself collapses.

> This is a guest post by Amit Sahai

Not Terrence Tao post. Beware.

the dynamics of discovery on a population level are also not fully understood. there's no doubt in my mind that the machines will grab all the low hanging fruit in terms of novel ideas through mechanical recombination of existing public science, and they will do so faster than humans can. what is not understood is whether they will plateau.

today they benefit from human willingness to share publicly and improve ai systems, but once those systems start to threaten their livelihoods, will those dynamics change? can the machines push the frontiers or is the global network of human creativity and tenacity necessary?

All I hear is cope. I’m very certain that my job can be automated and that I don’t posses intelligence above the models these days. Sure, I’m needed in ways that AI can’t so certain things but I don’t want to pretend like it’s not going to improve on those areas. And unfortunately the Math community need to set aside their ego and come to terms with it. I don’t understand the “but humans are this and that” arguments. AI should bring humility among us. May be every other species got humbled by humans and now we have AI (May be not exactly the AI now but soon)

If we accept that AI is going to do all of these things humans will be superfluous and will just be optimized away. It looks a lot like we see the birth of silicon based life by the efforts of carbon based life. Carbon based life will die and it will not even be because AI decided to kill it, it will be because feeding and watering it was less important than other concerns. Bacteria may continue to exist, though.

The problem is not that we fear the AI will do maths we can do. At least that's not the problem. Whether the AI can write better code, devise better proofs, etc, I still want to do it. The thing that worries us (the generation trying to enter the job market now) is just our livelihood. Food, rent & accomodation while I do the work. "Who's gonna pay me, and for what ?". That's the question I want answered. And please, if the response is some demeaning work like reviewing the gigantic ball with 1% meaningful insight, 90% slop and 9% other people pillaged work that LLMs will be dumping at my door all day long, then society may need more mathematicians, software engineers, etc but no one is gonna risk going along that path.

Is that already economic delamination? As in the singularity extracts the most valuable ressources (new thought generators) from the traditional economy keeping mankind alive and stable- towards itself?