Comment by Legend2440
2 months ago
The job of a mathematician is to study mathematics, not to create proofs.
An automatic proof solver doesn't make mathematicians obsolete any more than the excel sheet made accountants obsolete.
2 months ago
The job of a mathematician is to study mathematics, not to create proofs.
An automatic proof solver doesn't make mathematicians obsolete any more than the excel sheet made accountants obsolete.
Conjectures and proofs are the fruit of the understanding. Nobody gets paid to think without producing anything.
How about philosophers?
Good example! I think philosophy's purpose is to clarify and systematize unexplored intellectual areas. I imagine philosophers today are already using AI as intellectual sparring partners. I suppose if energy were cheap, we could run AIs all day long to pontificate like humans and write philosophical tracts on the issues of the day. When that happens, we will see if they say anything of merit.
Mathematicians will soon be left only to conjecture, with proofs being automated. The issue I see is that AI will devise proofs that are beyond our comprehension, since humans are already taxing each other (cf. Wiles, Mochizuki, Perelman, etc.) Once humans lose grasp of the proof, how will they propose new conjectures?
They make cab rides more enjoyable with their deep conversations.
They get paid to produce confusion.
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