Comment by ThrowawayR2

- If you have only a fuzzy idea of how to get to your travel destination, wrong turns and alternate routes may reveal sights and places you'd never have encountered without that wandering.

- If your GPS directs you straight to your travel destination, you are now where you wanted to be but missed out on the exploration. This is the sort of consequences the AI math proofs have.

STEM research thrives on that side exploration and unearthing unexpected things along the way. James Burke's famous documentary Connections spends the middle episodes talking about the unexpected directions that exploration has taken science. It's very hard to credibly make the case that this sort of meandering exploration is not valuable.