Comment by ipdashc
4 hours ago
I knew mathematicians were a smart bunch, but honestly, the events of the past few weeks have really given me a new level of respect for them.
They might be the first community I've seen to experience the AI "rush" and (at least as presented to an outside observer) immediately come together, assess the situation, and calmly, empathetically, and rationally act. They evaluated what AI is good at and what it lacks. They've thought through how it'll likely affect their field in the future. They've explained where the need for humans still lies, and made clear proposals for how to change their own field and for what demands to make of AI companies. Of course they're not all on the same page, but they're at least talking and trying.
They haven't started worshipping the machine god and loudly claiming their whole field is solved. Nor have they flailed wildly at LLMs as if complaining enough about it will make them go away.
Every major statement I've seen come out of the math community on this matter reads as well thought-through, humble, reasoned, and deeply human.
In these days of fear, uncertainty, and obsolescence anxiety, honestly, they've given me some confidence that maybe we will figure this stuff out after all. Maybe we'll learn from them. Who knows.
> I knew mathematicians were a smart bunch, but honestly, the events of the past few weeks have really given me a new level of respect for them.
As a mathematician, I am a bit disappointed by my (admittedly illustrious) colleagues.
I get the need to take it slowly (and I am a quite impatient person, so I shouldn't get to decide stuff like this), but everything said feels a bit too sour grapes for my taste.
Ok, maybe AI did not solve the field (I believe it will, btw), maybe there is a need for human "understanding", but:
1) They don't seem to consider even the possibility (not the certainty) that they might be wrong, that math as we know it is gone, and we cannot "adapt"
2) They seem to have been oblivious all these years about AI eventually reaching this point (at least I personally wasn't, I predicted this stage back in 2018)
Regarding 1, it's not clear what you want them to actually do. Would you rather they just gave up, rolled over and died instead of at least trying to rescue their field? What is to be gained from considering this?
I suppose you could say, hypothetically, that if the field were “solved” then the protection of the feelings and sense of need for human understanding of the now obsolete practitioners might hinder any benefits that the now solve field could provide.
The answer to this is probably just “get out of the way” and then your “work” would be to develop a better appreciation of what has been produced.
2 replies →
I think I'm mostly on your side (also I believed early it would get here), but what does it mean to "solve the field"? I'm pretty much as bullish as you get on AI but I'm sure I can come up with questions AI cannot solve. I think the space of problems in math is so large and the distribution of proof lengths so heavy-tailed, there's probably no way without dyson-sphereing the sun to solve all easy to state problems.
As a Nobel Prize winner, I am surprised that you have not noticed how Tao and Gowers were steering everyone in the AI direction for years and now do damage control by nudging everyone to either hypothetical open models paid for by industry or the EU or sitting in a committee that "advises" OpenAI.
No one is saying "Perelman and Wiles didn't need that silly AI and N-S was more of a counterexample". Most people imagine the sky is falling.
What if OpenAI is stalling because they don't have 100 additional unpublished proofs as claimed?
> As a Nobel Prize winner, I am surprised that you have not noticed how Tao and Gowers were steering everyone in the AI direction for years
I did notice, this is why I had thought that they had thought through the consequences. But, unfortunately, it is likely they imagined that AI would plateau somewhere around the "smart undergraduate" level and that they will stay relevant in pure problem solving.
>Every major statement I've seen come out of the math community on this matter reads as well thought-through, humble, reasoned, and deeply human.
Can't disagree with "deeply human", but I wouldn't always use it in a positive sense:
https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/09/10/open-letter-about-th...
>Participation in an event so closely associated with Anthropic and OpenAI could plausibly negatively impact the future reputations of participants
Agreed.
Their field is extremely rigorous. As rigorous as it can possibly get in that they have to prove each and every line of their work beyond any doubt. The discipline they have cultivated in their culture shows in their response to AI as well.
As opposed to some other fields in which rigor was either not part of the culture or was not always possible. For e.g., software engineering in terms of code quality being produced. There were some indirect signals here and there but they are all subjective.
No, I don't think they are adapting well. I've seen 3d designer at my company adapting better on the disruption and paradigm shifts GPT-6 Astra is going to cause.
The 3D designers are in a tougher situation because it's far less of abstract issue then math, and yet the results are astounding. It's hard to believe until you see it yourself. It's surreal.
> They haven't started worshipping the machine god and loudly claiming their whole field is solved.
Don't give Dario any ideas please.
> next week: Mathematicians are solved [214 points, 891 comments]