> can't empathize with treating mathematicians as some sort of AI refugees

They may be a vanguard.

> find it hard to believe that AI doesn't represent a net potential benefit to human understanding of mathematics. Yes it can be misused

Have you read Tao’s criticism of AI in mathematics? The concern isn’t mis-use, it’s ecosystem collapse.

A good analogy would be offshoring. If AI causes higher mathematical thought among humans to stop happening for a generation, we could wind up in a state where the field stops progressing because AI is unable to generate new interesting questions or cross-link findings into practical applications.

More directly, the risk is that happens in America but not in a more-thoughtful country.

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gradus_ad a day ago | parent | next [-]

But it's entirely up to humans whether or not higher mathematical thought ceases due to lazy over reliance on AI.

Just because AI is capable of churning out vomit inducing prose, doesn't mean we need to surrender to a future filled with it. Humans who actually care about what they're doing will use AI when and where it should be used. I trust the intelligence, curiosity and tenacity of mathematicians to learn to work with AI. I don't understand the sky is falling worst case scenario Tao and others seem to be taking as the most likely future.

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JumpCrisscross a day ago | parent [-]

> it's entirely up to humans to allow higher mathematical thought to stop happening

…yes. That’s why the human mathematicians are having this debate. How to keep the human mathematicians and their founders motivated to keep doing math, potentially more productively with these new tools.

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gradus_ad a day ago | parent [-]

Again I analogize to the situation with developers. There are glass half empty devs who seem to enjoy writing boilerplate and hate AI, and glass half full devs who realize AI when properly used enables an order of magnitude increase in productivity.

If AI saps motivation from some mathematicians, I question where their motivation came from in the first place. Maybe they're just too wedded to the traditional way of doing things and aren't fully appreciating the actual productivity gains AI makes possible.

	▲	JumpCrisscross a day ago \| parent [-]
		> glass half full devs who realize AI when properly used enables an order of magnitude increase in productivity Again, have you read Tao’s recent criticism of AI in mathematics? Nothing you’re saying is disputed. > If AI saps motivation from some mathematicians, I question where their motivation came from in the first place Question away. I care about results. If a substantial number of great mathematicians say this is a problem, and a substantial number of students agree, whether they’re unappreciative of their potentially pending unemployment is irrelevant to both that fact and the fact that they’re not going to be producing mathematics. (Again, here. The American mathematical ecosystem collapsing doesn’t mean the same will happen abroad.)

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quantumspandex a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This reprioritization of math would release a tremendous amount of human capital to do other more productive things other than posing yet another abstract puzzle which may or may not have an use in a few hundred years. It's not even clear if the human race can survive until then nor is it justified to spend that resource researching that far ahead instead of just when we need it.

	▲	JumpCrisscross a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> reprioritization of math would release a tremendous amount of human capital to do other more productive things other than posing yet another abstract puzzle which may or may not have an use in a few hundred years We don’t know this! We might just have no more American mathematicians because folks who aren’t mathematicians don’t understand that we’re turning mathematical breakthroughs from just a couple decades ago into real, working technology. > It's not even clear if the human race can survive until then It’s pretty obviously clear the human race can survive for hundreds more years…
	▲	mattmcal a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> It's not even clear if the human race can survive until then nor is it justified to spend that resource researching that far ahead instead of just when we need it. "Climate change is going to kill everyone in 50 years so we'd better work fast if we want to burn all this coal by then"

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gradus_ad a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn't that be developers?

	▲	JumpCrisscross a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Wouldn't that be developers? Not in the same extinction-class event way. In large part because hiring developers is still profitable. Also, not remotely as well organized or proactive as mathematicians anpparently are. So maybe less vanguard than the cannon fodder at the front.