Comment by martincsweiss

Thurston wrote about this in “On Proof and Progress in Mathematics,” including how his own approach changed from proving theorems to helping a community understand the mathematics.

Nicolas Le Roux, a Lagrange Prize winner / prof / strong mathematician, turned me onto that around the time I finished my PhD in ML last year. I have been thinking about it a lot, lately, for obvious reasons.

At first, it felt silly to grapple with what science is only after finishing a PhD. This publication from OpenAI finally pushed me over the line to publishing an essay about this struggle between AI science and human science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253759