To me this goes in the same direction as people not feeling sorry for software developers because our job is supposedly automating the job of other people (which I don't think describes the profession accurately as a whole at all).

Neither sits right with me. Can't we just all collectively acknowledge that we have to grapple with this new piece of technology that either is already or at least seems to be going to be hurtful to a lot of individuals?

Instead of looking at the in comparison limited group of people currently pushing this technology and asking ourselves whether we should be on board with their doing, we look to one another and are happy that someone else is now suffering just the same as we are. What a sad state of affairs.

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beng-nl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I agree with you because I so thoroughly understand what mathematicians are saying. Expertise and knowledge developed over decades, previously unique and marketable, and status conferring, are threatened in their relevance because of ai.

I know this intimately because I identify, roughly, as a programmer first and security researcher second. Guess which two fields ai companies decided to specialize in first? Yes, the FML ones.

The intellectually rewarding part of my job/skills - the only reason I enjoyed them - are, not completely gone yet, but threatened. And shrinking. This is a very scary observation.

I know from ‘isomorphic situations’ lessons in history that fighting the tide is pointless. I have to decide intelligently how to respond. Easier said than done when your livelihood and identity are at stake.

For now I still have a job but I and everyone around me is worried. In a year, At best our jobs will be very different.

So yes I empathize with these mathematicians enormously.

	▲	paulpauper 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't empathize with them that much, as many of them share in the blame of creating the broken system we have today. They want the status that comes with tenure and having a nice math job, and then pull up the ladder for everyone else. Math journals commonly reject papers as “out of scope” or “not of sufficient interest” without an editor or referee actually reading them. So it’s not as if the “math community” was checking these papers for accuracy in the first place. Now AI speeds up the creation of papers that go unread, and we’re supposed to pity mathematicians? If journals and experts can’t be bothered to read the papers, why should authors bother to write them without AI? And suddenly mathematicians are worried about AI papers being “too hard to read,” even though that wasn’t a concern pre-AI, when no one was reading them anyway. Too bad. The incentive structure now points toward AI, and mathematicians share the blame for that.

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hn_throwaway_99 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

100% agree. The comment you are responding to is basically playing "victim Olympics".

AI is going to suck hard for lots of professions, software engineers and mathematicians included. I think it's much more productive for folks in these professions to show solidarity with each other given the way AI will disrupt their livelihoods, rather than showing disdain based on who you think may have it slightly better.