> 'If I were better at math, I would have been better AI researcher

This is the first time I've seen someone claim this. I don't if it's display of anti-intellectualism or plain ignorance. Otoh, most AI/ML papers' quality has deteriorated so much over the years, publications in different venues are essentially beautified PyTorch notebook by people who just play around randomly with different parameters.

Math is math. There is a very important place for it. But it is a very specific corner. LLMs don't come from math or from people who are 'mathematicians'. They use some parts of math (just like everyone everywhere).

It appears to me some people have this special kind of naïveté about how foundational type of knowledge such as math gets actually used in practical applications. In practice, it just gets used (in software usually through some library) and never gets thought about again. They are not trying to invent new ways to do math, they are trying to invent AI :-).