This analogy is pants on head stupid. They're talking as though the only thing AI will ever solve is the Langlands program, not as though we have discovered a generic tool.
It's like saying "they drove the car one mile -- and every mile driven leads to more roads that we can trot along, why are you so worried about the future of horses?"
If you've forgotten how to think for yourself, you can also ask an LLM.
The host of the blog, Tao, was an early booster. He didn't think through the implications, and seems to have expected it to remain unable to do interesting work. Today he's on a "war footing".
I don't think mathematics are uniquely skilled at predicting the future, and the impacts of AI on their profession.
I perfectly understand his point and it is not about being selfishly frustrated by a machine being better than him. Is that really your interpretation of the discourse?
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/news/simons-foundation-laun...
Anyone still pretending this is normal technology is completely delusional. We're in the beginning of a singularity takeoff.
This guest author runs a seminar to lure people into AI:
CS had this moment decades ago, sans some theoretical parts that are joining the bandwagon now.
I did a bit of math research in grad school collaborating with my math postdoc roommate. I found the aversion to any computation making its way into the craft to be odd decades ago.
Well, now the proof’s in the AI generated pudding.
My recent take on AI is that people haven't adapted to the new huge potential of the tool, and don't dream big enough (yet).
It's like seeing a car engine for the first time, lamenting about the future of horses, and not realizing it'll also help us fly.
I never advanced in math past high school, but my assumption would be that we as a society aren't paying mathematicians to have fun[0]. The discoveries mathematicians make must translate into real improvements in engineering and other life improving fields. So why would we pay mathematicians to work on math much the same way, if a new machine-led way makes these discoveries faster and cheaper?
[0] Being a little facetious. I know I don't know what I don't know.
With math you never know up front what 'real improvements in engineering and other life improving fields' will require some key bit of it that someone interested in pure math came up with a decade or two (or 10) before we found an application.
https://fortune.com/article/ai-godfather-radiologists-obsole...
Ironic that you resort to “think for yourself” as your silly name calling go to btw
bananaflag•38m ago
Of course if you solve any existing problem, new ones appear. That's not the point. The point is that AI will be able to advance on any problem better than any human.
ivantop•31m ago
0c3ca83•25m ago
And it's becoming less clear over time that a breakthrough will be needed.
ForHackernews•20m ago
awesome_dude•7m ago
At issue with AI is that it's searching an existing corpus for fragments of solutions generated by humans - that's not necessarily novel, and we've not yet worked out how to make the machines actually invent.
cammikebrown•30m ago
jnstrdm05•30m ago
0c3ca83•23m ago
There's going to be some hobbyists doing math in their basements, but there's unlikely to be a future for professional mathematicians.
kaffekaka•16m ago
ion_trapper•18m ago
pitchlatte•9m ago
the obverse would be to assert that Lean (or any other theorem prover) is infallible under all circumstances, present and future - an even weightier claim in my opinion.
thrance•27m ago
andsoitis•26m ago
Define "better".
dooglius•23m ago
gavmor•7m ago
LLM agents are perfectly capable of "advancing" my codebase down bizarre, esoteric rabbitholes. Meanwhile, the value remains undelivered.
Many crystals, likewise, are advancing their fantastic complexities in the deep, dark recesses beneath the crust of the earth, but does it make a sound? Who gives a shit.
Many paperclips, indeed, can be churned out. Even we can be converted into paperclips, remember.
likoya•16m ago
conartist6•11m ago
If that was true it would of course be significant.
If you had no morals, 2 trillion dollars to spend, ability to commit intellectual property theft without consequences, and most of the smartest people in the world actively working to advance your cause... ...you really think you couldn't compete with the clankers?