> Are they paid to type code or create programs?

The goal is more to understand why something is true than just whether it is true. To oversimplify a lot, it's the difference between industry versus academic motivation. In the former case you have a point, but not so much in the latter. We really need both modes of work going on.

> As a not math person, seems strictly good that AI can solve more problems.

As a math person I think that's probably true, though it's not that simple. We do still have to understand the solutions to the problems, and take time to explore. That's how we figure out what problems should be solved in the first place. Cognitive debt is bad enough in your codebase, but you don't really want it to overwhelm entire academic disciplines.