Maybe the next frontier for AI is to make it more pedagogical.

If the aim of mathematics is to promote greater human understanding, then surely elevating everyone’s grasp and appreciation of math is of greater import than chasing another theorem feather for our hats - especially if AI can automate the plucking.

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hangsi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Arguably it is succeeding on this front - LLMs have been much more helpful for learning about mathematics topics than Wikipedia for a while now. Admittedly a somewhat low bar, but they are genuinely helpful. In many other fields the models can still only pull up equal (in my opinion).

	▲	p1necone 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's the 'can answer arbitrary questions' part for me. You could give me the most well crafted, comprehensive document ever and I would still misread bits of it, or miss some crucial bit of information that contextualises the rest or whatever. With LLMs I can ask endless dumb questions in a way that just would not be practical otherwise. The quality of the responses doesn't even have to be particularly good for it to be extremely useful - it's basically a turbo charged rubber duck for learning new concepts.

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itishappy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> If the aim of mathematics is to promote greater human understanding...

Is this the aim of mathematics?

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kzz102 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The aim is to produce a body of knowledge that will be useful to humanity. So far, the best way to ensure that knowledge is useful is to have a society of experts who understand them well. That may not be necessary any more with AI, but it's a scary thought -- because that logic can be applied to any human knowledge, not just mathematical.

	▲	antonvs an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> The aim is to produce a body of knowledge that will be useful to humanity. There's no such consensus. Read Hardy's "A Mathematician's Apology" to get a better understanding. Here's a quote which gives some idea of where Hardy was coming from: "I have never done anything 'useful'. No discovery of mine has made, or is likely to make, directly or indirectly, for good or ill, the least difference to the amenity of the world." Hardy valued math for its beauty, elegance, and permanence, and he's far from the only mathematician who would push back on the idea that mathematics should be "useful to humanity", except perhaps in the sense that art is useful to humanity.

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feanaro an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even if it were not, it is a wise aim, unlike ceding understanding to a robot.

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drivebyhooting 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is certainly what many mathematicians have used as justification for why humans should continue studying math.

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caaqil 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> Is this the aim of mathematics?

Think of it like this: when your extremely efficient 2-3 SD brain that could pattern match more aggressively than mere mortals seems to be losing ground to aggressively scalable stochastic parrots that can pattern match faster than you, you replace your contempt for teaching and pedagogy with sudden epiphany and awakening that nurturing curious Math lovers and developing the human spirit is what it's all about. It's a good gambit.