Comment by redox99
8 hours ago
I think most of the long hanging fruit has been discovered, and even then you'll have better ROI focusing funding on applied math instead of pure math.
8 hours ago
I think most of the long hanging fruit has been discovered, and even then you'll have better ROI focusing funding on applied math instead of pure math.
Reminds me of Michelson's (of Michelson-Morley) famous statement in 1900 that all of physics had essentially already been discovered, so the only remaining work was to apply what was known to new experiments. Similar statements were made about chemistry after Mendeleev and history after the cold war.
I didn't claim you wouldn't discover things in pure math that would decades later turn out to be useful in other fields. I'm sure you would. My claim was that the ROI is lower compared to applied math, which matters when funding is limited.
You still need some brilliant mathematicians to invent new problems. AI is not yet good at inventing problems which are both novel and interesting.
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