I'm an academic mathematician, and could you explain your second prediction?

It goes entirely against the culture of research mathematics to hoard secrets. If you've done something interesting, you want to share it, and it's in your best interest to share it.

Of course, this culture could change under external pressure from AI tools. But, aside from cryptography and the applied fields, I'm finding it difficult to imagine any possible motivation for spending substantial effort on top-level math and then keeping it secret.

Wouldn't AI make validating the research much cheaper?

Well, that's what AI does. It makes everything about the final product and nothing about the enjoyment of the process. Now a lot of people here will say "you can still read the AI results and enjoy math on your own time", but that is completely at odds with how most people do things: a large part of most people's enjoyment comes from sharing results with others and AI devalues that. People can't help but feel less impressed when you can come up with a result but AI can also.

People on here have also argued with me that enjoyment and fun should be decoupled from work but I'd argue that jobs that are enjoyable are important because I mean, what really counts in learning is inspiration. If no one is having fun, no one will be inspired to learn and do math in the first place. The best professors I've had are clearly having fun.

And sharing that fun on a human level is exceptionally important.

I just don't see the tradeoff (more math at the expense of people being able to have fun expressing themselves), as being worth it. The whole point of discovering knowledge is to enjoy the process and share that with the world to create hope an optimisim in it, not to product like a factory.

Unfortunately, this website tends to bring in the rare type of person who loves to believe that they can enjoy things all by themselves, and maybe they can, but the problem is that they (not necessarily you) foist their unusual view of the world on the rest of the world by developing and supporting AI and get defensive when someone points out that it actually contributes to a horribly destructive social structure - a cognitive dissonance most of them can't handle.

Note that the SAIR lecture is from 6 months ago, this Beamer presentation is from 2 days ago.

This is the template any field should have in the face of AI: screw AI, forget it. If you're using it, it's a disrespect to the field. Let's continue without it. I think that's the only sane approach.

Even as somebody who uses AI every day and has integrated it in useful ways, I don't see how the rise of the AI industry can be anything other than terrifying. It signals the rise of a new feudal system. Couple that with the rolling back of democracy across the globe and growing trend of authoritarianism, even in Europe, and I just can't be excited. In Germany particularly, it feels like every week there's some new idea to increase surveillance and control over the populace while the AfD is knocking on the door.

As a (sort of former) mathematician myself, I can say two things. First, one of the most exciting parts of mathematics is to see what other people can do with it and the results they obtain, and learning from them (and sharing with them in return).

And second, I am completely uninterested in what AI has to offer. To me (and most normal people) knowledge pursuit is about inspiring others with discovery and the intellectual joy of doing something yourself. Like it or not, that's a necessary requirement for any field to healthy. To put it more plainly, one cannot decouple the fun from the work. I suspect many are jealous of this, but whatever.

Therefore, I see no benefit to AI in math, none whatsoever. Senior mathematicians like Terry Tao might have a different approach because I can imagine: who can resist an oracle that can help them out with their toughest problems. But Dr. Tao IMO is too blinded by that to see the destructive nature of AI, and to be frank, a lot of top mathematicians have too much hubris to understand that they can't control AI.

To be released imminently per this toot from 2 days ago (saying forthcoming in a day or two): https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/116977934921819775

In times when software eng teams push for maximizing token usage, Tao's public view is to encourage verification, limit AI use for tasks that have real-life consequences and prevent low-effort papers that exhaust the review pipeline?

He also focuses on training the next generation of mathematicians and prioritizing the process of slow digestion of results, which to me sounds very.. reasonable?