Comment by hodgehog11

7 hours ago

Exactly. Gowers is in the unique position to think about the "glory" of frontier mathematics, but for essentially everybody (especially those working outside of number theory), that dream died long ago. There are far too many mathematicians now.

Many mathematicians work because they love the breakthrough (a certain quote of Villani comes to mind). They love finding new results, uncovering new mysteries. From that point of view, having an AI that can build on your basic ideas and refine them into more powerful arguments is awesome, regardless of who gets the credit. There are those that treat it more like solving puzzles so the result is not of interest. From that point of view, I can see the dissatisfaction. But I have found those with that viewpoint don't tend to make it as far in academia as those with the other viewpoint.