Comment by sashank_1509
15 hours ago
Can the mathematics field come out of this stronger and better. I doubt it, things will only get worse. There is no future in being a Proof Digester, no valuable human is motivated in doing that, nor is there any glory in it. But there are some potential pathways for maths to come out strong from this:
1. Relentless focus on quality. Every publication must act as if it’s going to be included in a future textbook, that is a newcomer can get into it given a reasonable amount of time, and math priors learnt in undergrad. (NO AI Slop proof passes this bar as of now)
2. Limit the publications per year. Each author is allowed 2 with a max of 50 pages. This allows the author who chooses to not surrender his cognitive capacity to the machine, still be allowed to play this game. Of course who wants to orchestrate a thousand agent workflows, is free to do so, he is only limited to 2 publications.
3. The aesthetics of the field changes from purely solving the problem to solving the problem with simplest most elegant set of ideas. What 3 sets of simple ideas solves large swathes of problems, that should be given a fields medal, not purely solving the problem, which the AI will be able to do.
> There is no future in being a Proof Digester, no valuable human is motivated in doing that, nor is there any glory in it.
Coding has already gone this way and plenty of people do find motivation and glory in the final product vs. the building of the product (myself included). I absolutely see value in a person being able to humanize llm math output and see the field moving in that direction.
I don’t think you’d be doing this if you were paid peanuts. I also think coding is in a transitional period, most people who claim they are “building the product” are going to lose their jobs as the models get better.
I am genuinely doing it for free in my free time on top of my work (in fact I pay for the models) so I am doing it for less than peanuts. I completely disagree w/r/t the model take, their is skill in steering work to get a product done that is what management has always been about, I do think in the long run this will be automated but I have seen 0 progress on it so far.
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