Comment by contubernio
20 hours ago
I'm a professional mathematician. Today I proved what for me is a very solid theorem. It's something I had thought about for a few years. With a few weeks of serious use of AI I've found a proof that I am currently trying to write up, but which appears correct. The change in the workflow is enormous, but so is what one can do if one has clear what to do and how to do it.
Not every problem will receive $20M in funding to be solved by AI; for the rest, good human guidance will have to suffice. Labs only pulled this stunt because they wanted to show investors how powerful their models are on their own. But look again at the cost of that army of 10,000 SOTA agents. At the very least, I foresee a need for humans to decide when costly AI resources should be committed to a specific search plan. Grant review remains irreducibly human because it involves choosing which directions to fund and weighing opportunity costs: taking one path forecloses others.
Congratulations. You are one of those leading the way, showing how we will adapt and how the world will get better from AI.
That's not the conclusion. I started using AI after the Jacobian conjecture counterexample and have used a particular problem to learn how to use AI and to explore it's capabilities. I'm not a great mathematician but I'm full faculty with 25+ years of research experience and lots of articles and I just proved in a few weeks something that had resisted my efforts for some years.
The exploration process is much easier now. Ideas are quickly testable and multiple tests can help identify a technical obstruction. The tool requires good guidance and input but as it trains on people like me it will need those less.
At the very least our way of doing things must change. More pessimistic views seem to me defensible.
GP never said it was the conclusion. He was praising you, after you on your own volition decided to comment here to let know others about your experience with AI.
It seems to me you're a very privileged individual, I'd suggest you practice gratitude regularly in your life.
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