Comment by bemtevi
7 hours ago
I think the question is rather, what will happen to human beings when any possible personal intellectual accomplishment will no longer be seen as interesting or relevant by other human beings when AI can do most of it?
It's all well and good to say that we should just go on these journeys for our own enrichment, but even so they will just be doing it alone...or else not do it at all because they need a shared human effort surrounding them to do it, and therefore end up depressed and immersed in drugs or media all day.
Of course we're awed at what AI can do now, because all of us observing it have had the luxury of having such opportunities before AI. I got my PhD before AI and I found satisfaction in participating in a shared math community, which I wouldn't have done if I were starting my PhD now, because I would find the current academic environment unacceptable and useless.
Many people still do woodworking for the love of the craft, even though factories exist with machines that can do everything hand tools can but 10x better and faster. If AI gets way out in front of anything humans understand, I expect that mathematicians will probably pick up where their understanding actually is, and carry on.
That analogy is rather poor. Woodworking produces discrete, unique, and physical objects, that can be made, and found use for, as many times as the craftsman wishes. Once you discover a law of physics, you can't discover it again, and it's not yours to do with as you please.