Everyone seems to wrap up their criticisms on AI and labor saving technology in general as though it's a personal affront when in reality, as it's always been, it's an economic problem. Once we have UBI or something similar, you will see most people's opinions on AI doing math and art, for example, start to change to one of cooperation, not adversarial.

>Should other people give you those resources because you have a soul?

For what it's worth, yes, I believe this, I think people should give each other the resources needed to survive because we have souls.

Won't be surprised if he believes in literal souls but I am waiting to see what he says.

What benefit is a feudal lord to a human soul?

the human touch. In cooking you would call it cooking with love. You know the reason your grandmas cooking will taste better to you than any michelin star restaurant.

> Happiness is a pointless goal anyway.

Spoken like a true robot. For most of us, happiness (and I mean that broadly defined, e.g. "life satisfaction") is the only goal. I certainly thing happiness is a much more critical goal than "increasing shareholder value".

It is super common during a course of study of maths to experience great enjoyment on encountering certain proofs or ideas.

Why would he call you? AI will propose those new problems instead, and tackle them without any need for your (or any human’s) intervention

This is something that sci-fi and AI safety has been talking about for a while.

It isn't just about worrying if AI is going to wipe us out, it's trying to figure out how human kind survives itself as things so rapidly change.

The early 1900s also had very rapid change after the introduction of ICE vehicles and airplanes. We also had massive wars that killed millions and brought forth society ending weapons. What is this round of rapid change going to bring?

I really don't see how to read "hysteria", "breakup letter", "literally a math academic crying" as anything other than an attempt to dunk on mathematicians.

Math is toxic yet the least toxic?

I will stick to my claim that math exists in the context of the hyper-competitive overall academic culture.

I should add that extreme competition combined with math being something people love, something with beauty unto itself, produces an especially weird world compared compared to a situation in, IDK, business school, where everything is about the money.

I mean, asking "who deserves to live the dream" really twists people's heads.

It's inaccurate because nothing about math or CS is "existentially" toxic. Or "distinctly" as the other commenter.

If you accept that as a premise then obviously you agree with their truth.

If you don't accept toxicity as somehow intrinsic to the subject but rather the structural conditions, say, of post-neoliberalized academia at large, and certain faculties being only a bit more susceptible (if even, or just different, say compare humanities vs STEM reactions in the future), then the whole comment reads as a conflation.

Instead the simpler answer is that academia at large values freedom of inquiry and other Enlightenment notions which are privileged compared to outside of academia. But that is not toxicity, it's just intellectual integrity and the academic autonomy in pursuit of one's interests avocationally. The toxicity comes from the intellectual profession having to function as a modern clerisy for socioeconomic reasons under post-neoliberal capitalism.

People may conflate the two attributions and that is a deep mistake, in my opinion. In fact the conflation due to internalized oppression easily creates and explains this kind of resentful, dismissive tone response that is a distortion of the true situation.

And you can see this in the desire to eliminate humanities (and math departments) in the current wave of anti-intellectualism sweeping the United States. My own life was greatly helped as a young person by reading existential philosophy, and my son has found his own intrinsic desire to be in school thru a combo of cool old geology professors, cool young philosophy grad students, and real analysis.

It is the same lack of depth of people saying math should just give results and not seek beauty or a life should be to get rich instead of daring to be deeply involved with people and seek to make life joyful and interesting.