Comment by jwilber

1. Those early discoveries were much closer to today’s applied mathematics (which many of the pure math academic types sneer at FWIW), and 2. They made those discoveries without public funding.

If AI can bring forth mathematical discoveries much faster than academics, wouldn’t it behove society to use AI? It seems the me the tradeoff here is the benefit of all vs the ego of a few. I empathize with the struggle many math PhDs must be going through, and maybe I don’t fully understand the tradeoff as they see it, but I’m not convinced by the letter written by a few career, tenured academics.