Comment by unknown-unknown

Title: Hilbert's Dream, Tim Gowers - LMS Popular Lectures 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ordDFw588&t=3597s

Audience member: (1:00:00 - 1:00:09):

so you said that if there were such a program that could you know provide a proof or disproof then mathematicians will be out of business what really, I mean that you think it would be liberating

Tim Gowers (1:00:10 - 1:01:14):

well that's a very interesting question actually if there were a program that could solve the kinds of problems that we spend our time solving and do it much more quickly than we could then we would be out of what comes with what currently constitutes business but we would it's not completely inconceivable that we could just say we've got this fabulous tool now what are we going to use it for and it's a little bit I don't know I'd want to sort of plant aside what would we do if we had a program that could just answer any mathematical question you gave it to or else if it failed you'd be pretty confident that nobody was ever going to solve it and certainly a lot of applied maths might be pretty pleased with with something like that so what I really mean is that I could just modify what I said and just say it would radically change what mathematicians do or what pure mathematicians do