So...why can't an AI do the exact same thing? Make AI so it understands math better for future math to understand more math.

Unless your argument is that mathematicians are effectively useless?

I am assuming that's not your point though.

▲

gpm an hour ago | parent [-]

> Unless [...] mathematicians are effectively useless?

It's always been a bit bizarre that this isn't the case. Mathematicians are almost always working on problems that there is no good reason to expect to have utility in the real world... problems they selected because of their elegance or whatever... yet there is a strong historical trend of their work having huge importance after the fact. Sometimes in fields that weren't even invented yet at the time of the work.

There's something to be said for the idea that disrupting a system that is working well for no apparent reason is a bad idea.

▲

drivebyhooting 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Math academia was not working well at all. Almost every single graduated from my PhD program wound up working in ads or finance.

The gatekeeping in math academia is extremely unfair, or should I say objectively fair but personally unfair. I won’t cry crocodile tears.

▲

johnsmith1840 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

So solving and discovering math is or is not the core value a mathematician provides?

If AI can perfectly replicate their work but faster and better then what?

SWE have nobody crying for them as they've been massively disrupted.

▲

gpm 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

Mathematicians provide two complementary services bundled together.

1. Proving theorems - what AI can apparently replicate faster and better.

2. Creating definitions and new theorems from those definitions to prove, selecting which of the possible statements to work on. I.e. developing the "language" of mathematics. So far there is no evidence that LLM can do this at all well. And there's some reason to think that mathematicians won't be as good at this if they aren't also doing the first part.

The value to society only comes when they do both "well", and it's 2 which is really the black magic where we don't understand why they've been so useful to us.

	▲	johnsmith1840 a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		Fair take. So I totally agree if AI also cannot do the second part better than a person. Honestly though, I wouldn't want to take that bet. I never thought that the first thing AI would become super human AGI like is math. You ask me 10years ago and I'd think the opposite. I think we all would have said we'd have super human HR employees before a super human mathematician. But here we are.