> 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.

I can’t afford to be one of your credentialed reserves, Amit. ADHD screwed me over in early life or I’d have breezed through that dual masters in cognets/compsci by 2003, and now that I’ve stabilized my brain and am burning through years of school at a rapid pace, my country’s socioeconomically ruined — I’ll be lucky to escape with my accounting degree as my school is visibly being sucked into the vortex every year I progress. The only hope left for me to be what you need of us is to self-study, but without a degree I’ll just be treated as a crank or an AI proxy/puppet if I slip up and talk about interesting math with anyone, so what’s even the point of taking that path? I originally pivoted my math skills into systems theory and process diagnostics instead, which of course now everyone has kicked to the curb and replaced with AI. I’d have made an excellent Susan Calvin — I was working to be a cognitive tech with diagnostics, zeroth law, and group psych specialties, AMA! — but the financial investment to provide the runway to take that lonely, dreary six year slow as molasses slog through maths that universities think is somehow an appropriate teaching velocity (six months for precalculus alone?!) in order to earn the mere chance to have my resume rejected by an AI firm that uses AI hiring and and can’t tolerate someone with a strong moral position regarding societal harms is a very bad choice, whether you use simple probability or game or systems theory to evaluate it. Taking that quarter-mil-plus burden as loans in the hopes of employment at the other end in a field actively having its social, reputational, and moral fabric being ripped apart by AI? That’s not just a bad bet, that’s chasing fool’s gold at the end of a fading rainbow in a desert mirage. So, with sincere apologies, while you’d benefit from having me on your ‘reserves’ list (I have written testimonials spanning some twenty-plus years to that effect) I’ll never come to your attention as a support tech or as an accountant, and I accepted that outcome years before anyone else realized this need for cogsci mathematicians with a teacher’s specialty of analogy-building and the ability to disregard interpersonal nonsense to focus on the needs of societies. Better luck with the next generation, though!