Comment by fph
9 hours ago
> Maybe mathematics just becomes a little more like other fields--relying on labs with lots of money for compute, digging through a corpus of AI-generated proofs, etc.
I think a better comparison is: mathematics just becomes like mining bitcoins.
I think you might have to explain that comparison a bit more to be honest. How are math proofs like bitcoins? A bitcoin has a pre-defined value, a math conjecture / proof is a bit more complicated.
A Bitcoin does not have any pre-defined value. The value of Bitcoin keeps fluctuating, and historically has risen dramatically from its initial value of 0. If this weren't the case, there would be no investment/speculation in Bitcoin because there would be no potential for any ROI.
In reality, the value of Bitcoin is determined by humans (even if indirectly, not by planning), and I think the OP’s point may have been that maths proofs can be regarded similarly. No intrinsic value, just what humans find in it.
If there's a machine that automatically turns electricity into proofs then mathematics becomes a different thing altogether.