r/OpenAI • u/ThereWas • 8h ago
News OpenAI's latest blow to mathematicians: 'They have annihilated my field of research'
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/science/article/2026/10/12/openai-s-latest-blow-to-mathematicians-they-have-annihilated-my-field-of-research_6758515_10.html116
u/slumberjak 6h ago
Everyone seems to think this is just another round of automation, no different from the automobile or the printing press. It’s not. It’s the last automation.
During previous industrial revolutions, when a vocation is made obsolete there was always a new abstraction to retreat into. This machine produces the widget faster than you can? Fine, use/design/optimize the machine. It’s always been about moving from manual labor toward intellectual labor.
This time is different. There is no next abstraction (aside from a temporary respite where you direct the AI, but that’ll soon be absorbed). Indeed, it would be arrogant to believe that any endeavor would always be the exclusive domain of humans, or that our preeminence would remain unchallenged. Yet we did not prepare for life after obsolescence. Instead, capitalism has decided that for us: you don’t get to participate anymore.
That’s what the mathematicians are facing. They’re not just sad because they have to retool (they can’t) or that someone got there first (happens all the time, trust me). They’re sad because this is may be the end of their art. The current system has no mechanism to value artisanal “hand-made” mathematical insight. And maybe it shouldn’t. But if you’d dedicated your life to the pursuit of beauty, of insight, wouldn’t you be dismayed when that pursuit came to an end?
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u/greentrillion 5h ago
Yes but most people in this subreddit are too dumb to consider this instead they just happy people smarter than them are first.
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u/Doug__Dimmadong 2h ago edited 1h ago
God if that isn’t the perfect summary of the attitude towards mathematicians and computer scientists in these AI subs recently.
Also, I fear it’s a bit of short-sighted gloating: do you really want a bunch of very smart and credentialed people in the applicant pool for your “AI-proof” job?
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u/thorax 3h ago edited 3h ago
It's crazy. Using Astra to build upon Bel's pi irrationality exponent == 2 proof, an armchair amateur made more progress in number theory regarding irrational measures than all sorts of mathematicians in the past many years (in terms of measure refinement proofs). All within 4 days and all with computer verified lean proofs.
A big swath of this Wikipedia page needs to be redone now.
There's really no way this is a good thing for existing mathematicians-- it's all changing so drastically.
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u/NoFapstronaut3 5h ago
I'm going to pour one out for my homies!
It's sad that they're losing their art but it's also said that artists are losing their art and musicians are and writers and software developers...
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u/vovap_vovap 5h ago
Yes, that is very good formula. Unless you are going to do direct plug to a human brain. Which is a possibility
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u/nothingInteresting 5h ago
But the limits of our brains processing will still be the limiting factor. Ai that has to interface with human brains will be far less capable than ai that’s not constrained by our hardware. It will be similar to a company full of geniuses who have to interface with a toddler ceo.
Ultimately we’ll be just as obsolete eventually
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u/EnoughWarning666 51m ago
Ultimately we’ll be just as obsolete eventually
Humans are much too arrogant to allow that to happen. Assuming we don't lose control over AI, once we're able to more directly modify our own physiology we're going to use it to augment our own capabilities. There may be a brief period here where AI completely dominates humankind and nearly all endeavors, but it won't last long before we turn our sights on augmentation.
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u/Lost-Ad-2805 2h ago
Previous revolutions automated at most part of a workflow, ai automates not only entire workflow but orchestrates multiple. It is scary really.
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u/theunhappythermostat 2m ago
There's a lot of flaws in your reasoning, but here's the most relevant one: PEOPLE LIKE PEOPLE.
It's a basic facet of human psychology. And its extremely relevant to the future of work, too. Because people DO and WILL prefer humans in many situations, and these humans will get paid for being humans.
That's one thing you just can't teach AI and robots.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 8h ago
Serious question to everyone here: if someone made a technology that completely eliminated your current job and any adjacent job you might pivot into, would you not experience a bit of anxiety? Even if it was a net positive to society?
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u/Miserable-Ad3207 5h ago
I am a complete layman but are mathematicians not still greatly needed as they know what questions to ask and have the knowledge to pry deeper. Would they not use AI as a tool to pose new questions and assist solving new problems?
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u/Regular-Low2011 2h ago edited 2h ago
Quite impossible at the rate this is going. The issue is that OpenAI simply shits out results. It's quite literally ChatGPT solve X problem.
Speaking as someone who just finishing PhD it's very possible we end up with very few humans able to actually understand advanced mathematics because part of the incentive for learning to do advanced math (which is not lucrative and requires a voluntary commitment of time) as is the case with most academia is the prestige. People don't go into this field to be glorified prompt engineers.
This is very bad for a variety of reasons, mostly that if a model misinterprets what you are saying no one will be able to read any algorithms that rely on advanced math to ensure you've actually given it proper commands.
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u/Reasonable_Tip_5659 56m ago
if you get into math for the prestige that is dumber then doing it for money. Most do it because they are addicted to it. More will understand it when they have better tools to visualize and learn it.
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u/Regular-Low2011 18m ago
With absolute disrespect, no they won't. There is very little reward. It's six years extra schooling where you earn a pittance compared to the massive opportunity cost. AI will not actually help you understand math you need a decade of hard practice starting at K-12. I can tell you this because I've actually taught undergraduates, and they will just watch you mindlessly even though the tools are right there. And that's Calculus, it's the easy stuff. Simply having access to someone who understands things isn't understanding them yourself.
I could easily have gone to Wall Street and earned 6 figures straight out of undergrad, and just did hookers and blow as could basically everyone else in my department. I didn't do that, because like many others I personally valued the possibility of doing something interesting over the raw money I could earn where you were part of a community of similarly smart people doing interesting things. Apparently that was a mistake.
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u/BrightAccountant266 5h ago
That’s totally possible, and most mathematicians are pretty excited about the potential of AI. The issue is that OpenAI dumped huge numbers of results on the internet all at once, without mathematicians having any part in the development of them. This makes the posing new questions part harder as the insights that lead to those new questions come from working through the problems.
If OpenAI gave mathematicians access to the models and let them work with the models to achieve these results, there would probably be minimal controversy and mathematicians would probably be pretty happy with OpenAI. Instead it is kind of interpreted as a way to show off their technology and make more money.
Regardless, most mathematicians are excited about the potential of AI, and it probably will greatly advance the rate at which research is done in the field. The transition will take a bit, but the way OpenAI did this is generally perceived as not very useful (rather than the technology not being useful).
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u/StolenPies 3h ago
3 years ago AI was cartoonishly bad. 3 months ago AI was as good as a smart graduate student. Now it's decimated the field.
What do you think this is going to look like in another 3 years? 7? 10?
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u/Marklar0 1h ago
Not if they lose their established incentive system. AI math is a dead end path to obscurantism.
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u/Reasonable_Tip_5659 54m ago
Incentives can change. Art didn't die when cameras were invented. Incentives changed from rewarding realism to abstract or stylized forms.
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u/PaulJannece 8h ago
Yes. But I wouldn’t expect society to halt progress so it can pay me to figure out solutions to problems that don’t exist any more.
We’re all facing this at some point soon.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 8h ago
Yes we all are.
Follow up: are you actually engaging with mathematicians or are you just getting your information from reddit comments on AI forums? I haven’t seen a serious mathematician imply or explicate we should halt progress for the sake of mathematicians’s careers.
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u/PaulJannece 8h ago
The Association for Human Mathematics had called for a boycott of OpenAI after the company published the findings. The group said mathematicians “did not ask for this work to be done,” and that the publishing of more than 700 findings is “not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power.”
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 8h ago
I’m aware of this. This isn’t expecting progress to halt though. They’re not demanding OpenAI to stop training their models. This is them wanting more consideration of how humans factor into the field of math.
An analogy: a chess club calls for a boycott of Stockfish in their tournaments. They’re not saying stockfish shouldn’t exist or that more powerful chess engines shouldn’t be made. They simply want to preserve their personal circle of human interaction with chess for the time being.
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u/PaulJannece 7h ago
I’m not going to talk around your riddles. Either you are aware of the above statement or not.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 7h ago
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t make it a riddle
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u/PaulJannece 7h ago
Thinking the preferences of a chess club are somehow analogous to a statement about condemning OpenAI’s progress, using a completely irrelevant scenario, does not mean you rejected the specific evidence you requested, on a semantic technicality, due to having a superior intellect mate.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 7h ago
Yet another case of a redditor failing to understand comparisons/analogies. An analogy is a comparison, not an equivalency. Of course analogies have distinctions. The chess club analogy served as a vehicle rooted in some reasonable historical precedence. It wasn’t alone meant to “reject the evidence requested.”
My first paragraph alone did that because, yes, on semantic technicality you were not correct. You can’t get upset with me because you didn’t choose your words carefully, buddy.
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u/PaulJannece 7h ago
Wow you’re insufferable.
You asked for a statement from mathematicians implying that progress should be stalled.
I served up exactly that and it’s sent you into some weird malfunction.
Your analogy doesn’t work, because you don’t understand analogies, silly Redditor.
Maybe ‘everyone else’ isn’t the problem here…
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u/SolarBum 6h ago
Chess is a game that exists purely for entertainment, with zero application to anything else. It's not too wild to ask that technological advances in the chess realm respect a "personal circle of human interaction," given the only point of chess is for human interaction and entertainment.
That's not the case for math. Math has no mandate to preserve "a human function" because it's function is far more than as an academic exercise or means of human expression. Unlike chess, the goal of advanced math is to both push forward our understanding of how the universe works, but also to tangibly apply those findings to advance our technologies. In theory, to better all of humanity.
Mathematicians who want to halt AI in advanced math to "preserve human function" are effectively asking to intentionally stunt human progress in order to humor a small population of mathematicians whose services are becoming obsolete but still want to keep their job and prestige.
Ultimately they find themselves in the same situation as countless before them (scribes, lamplighters, human computers, etc.) whose jobs simply became obsolete. So it goes.
That said, AI does not innovate. The solutions it comes up don't make creative leaps, it simply applies existing logic, and solves things largely through attrition and scale. So there will still be room at the top for the most creative human mathematicians to innovate new out-of-the-box ways of thinking and problem-solving, and ultimately we wills till need people well-versed in math to guide AI into solving problems, and validate the output.
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u/HammerOfThor 2h ago
At what point will people admit that AI does in fact innovate? We have ample evidence right here. If any human discovered a single one of these proofs would you really claim they didn't innovate in doing so? What even is innovation? Is being human in the definition?
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u/drpengu1120 30m ago
I dunno most of these math problems are closer to a chess game than curing cancer when it comes to human progress. I say this as a person with a PhD in math, now working in industry. There are some areas of math that are actually useful, and I don't think people are balking about AI being used to advance knowledge there. But most of it is just glorified super hard puzzles where you get prestige for coming up with hard puzzles and solving them.
The problems that people are worried about are that there are a lot of byproducts of this system that we actually still need to advance human progress (e.g., occasionally discovering something actually useful, training a lot of the bright minds that are pushing things like AI forward), and we're not sure what happens when the current system collapses. In that sense, you could say the same thing about a ton of fields, which is one of the things the mathematicians are warning about. Math is just one of the easiest for AI to attack first because it's purely logic from first principles.
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u/soboro1025 7h ago
The association of human mathematics does not represent the whole math society. It is formed literally a month ago.
At least in my institution more that half of the mathematicians do not agree with the statement.
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u/V-Right_In_2-V 6h ago
I dunno. I’m a developer and AI didn’t wipe out my job. It just made me way more productive. Why can’t mathematicians use AI to make them more productive like developers learned to do?
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u/Boring_Coast178 5h ago
Just wait my friend. You just wait.
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u/V-Right_In_2-V 5h ago
Somebody has to use the AI agents and have them build the solutions our business needs. AI doesn’t just build tools autonomously and magically know what we need
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 6h ago
What if AI isn’t impacting your job in the same way it’s impacting mathematicians?
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u/V-Right_In_2-V 6h ago
OpenAI has mathematicians solving these problems. Nothing is stopping these guys from leveraging AI as a tool like other professions do
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u/Sufficient-Object-89 7h ago
I think the problem is that many are framing it as having a negative effect on society when it's really about their ego and income.
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u/Eastern-Ad-3586 7h ago
Most mathematicians are poor, at least in academics.
Most of them are also obscure.
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u/i_like_maps_and_math 6h ago
Just because they need the money doesn't make such arguments any less dishonest.
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u/Eastern-Ad-3586 5h ago
Baked into your argument is the assumption that the people saying we should still have human mathematicians are doing it for financial reasons.
My point is that it’s an untrue assumption. There are very good reasons for not wanting to just get rid of mathematicians that have nothing to do with those peoples’ meager salaries.
I know this is probably hard for you to believe but there are a lot of people out there who care about others and want to make the world better. Everyone isn’t just motivated by pure greed.
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u/i_like_maps_and_math 4h ago
Maybe there are good reasons but I haven't heard any convincing arguments. I've mostly just seen people being emotional and not engaging in good faith.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 7h ago
I would replace ego with passion. Can you really name ten mathematicians off the top of your head?
As far as income…what’s wrong with that? Hopefully you recognize that entire groups of people losing their income is indeed a negative effect on society. We absolutely should push back on these billionaires building a tech with no current social safety net. We don’t have UBI right now.
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u/KanishkT123 6h ago
What I've learned in the last few weeks on this subreddit is that it's full of people who have a bone to pick with specifically people they perceived as being smarter than they are. It's the first time in history that cognitive labor is being automated, and there is a certain part of the population that cannot wait to show those uppity academics what for, as if mathematicians have been living it up in their mansions instead of barely having the money and budget to afford chalk.
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u/FiliusIcari 6h ago
What I've learned is there's a staggering amount of scientific illiteracy and anti-intellectualism in the type of person that regularly comments on these subs. There's a meaningful difference between knowing a fact and understanding why it's true and mathematics is probably the single field where that difference matters the most.
It's hard to take a lot of these people seriously
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u/r-3141592-pi 2m ago
You should know that this mathematician's reaction does not represent the entire mathematics community. Many mathematicians are thrilled to understand these proofs, work with these models, and learn more about their field.
As for people who are not involved in any of this, I don't think most of them have a bone to pick. In fact, the general public admires intelligence, as long as people aren't obnoxious about it.
Besides, most individuals dislike mathematics and since it not usually a well paid job, I doubt most people envy the profession, especially when so many other jobs seem more interesting and financially rewarding.
Let's just say that some mathematicians haven't covered themselves in glory lately. Their very out-of-touch statements make the profession seem ego-driven, and I think that rubs the public the wrong way. To some extent, ego is a part of any intellectual endeavor, but it should not override the overarching purpose of the work. It is also extremely unhealthy to become attached to problems as if they were your personal toys, and as a consequence, some high-profile mathematicians come across as though they would not want their problems solved unless they were involved in the story, and that, of course, is not acceptable in any profession.
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u/ByteHavenGames 6h ago
I could agree in spirit but a tiny group's income is not equivalent to scientific progress advancing nearly all scientific fields for the whole world assuming these results aren't just smoke and mirrors. We've automated away proffesions for far larger groups than mathematicians throughout history. This is no different.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 3h ago
I could understand the sentiment if mathematicians were alone in being automated. This is the start. Historically, we have not automated nearly as much of the labor force as we will soon. Mathematics is just the start.
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u/ByteHavenGames 3h ago
LLMs have natural affinity with highly structured verifyable languages like math (and by extension code) and all of the recent advancements have been nearly entirely due to post training, which requires a lot of good data. In my experience LLMs still fail in anything that is subjective and can't be verified by lean, compiler, static typing and other such systems.
For example, humans have not come up with a coherent game design theory. Major AAA studios with decades of experience fail game design all the time. So LLMs can't do it either - there's no good data to post train with. Recent decompilation and modding craze is LLMs decompiling existing systems or extruding logic within clear, existing boundaries, it's not doing this from 0.
The rumor mill is talking about recursive self improvement, which could turn the current state of things on its head but it remains to be seen. As things are currently, math, code and little bit of basic 3D is just about the only things LLMs are somewhat good at.
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u/Helloiamwhoiam 1h ago
A year ago mathematicians thought LLMs could barely do basic high school math. When progress in the field was made, they lingered on the limitations. The limitations never seemed to last long.
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u/philljarvis166 19m ago
I think one of the arguments is these results aren’t really advancing any fields - the advancement comes from learning how the result was achieved, often the result itself doesn’t have a great impact (navier stokes is a great example of this). Im curious to know what happens when the only data left to train these models on is data generated by themselves - I am under the impression the current tech tries hard not to do this, presumably because they are worried it will not work well…
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u/ByteHavenGames 14m ago
Per recent rumor mill we're moving past the idea of llm data feeding some kind of death spiral of training that leads to degradation. They speak of recursive self improvement which implies said improvement is based in synthetic data. Can't say if it's real or marketing hype just yet, we'll see in a few months.
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u/TheCrowbar9584 5h ago
It DOES have a negative impact on society. You can’t get seniors if AI eliminates all the junior roles.
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u/SomewhereHot4527 2h ago
Its also a problem because they will rely on mathematicians to validate the vast majority of these proofs, which of course will not be paid labor
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 1h ago
At a higher income, you have access to things other people don't.
Do you think there won't be a class of people who have access to things you won't in the future if this all comes to pass? Because unless you're a multimillionaire or billionaire, you won't.
UBI is just going to be a pittance to survive.
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u/AvocadoAlternative 7h ago
From an individual point of view, yes, I would be anxious as hell. From a societal point of view, this is something that will happen regardless. And I can understand both sides of the debate. I can have sympathy for mathematicians and still say that this is ultimately a good thing. Brad Pitt’s character from The Big Short said it best: “just don’t fucking dance.”
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u/7ECA 6h ago
Of course it causes anxiety. Just like when the US outsourced manufacturing jobs to China and brought in robots to replace workers that together created the rust belt. But I don't recall the millions who suffered getting the press coverage of these mathematicians
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u/clearlysnarky 3h ago
Mathematicians were just the first definitive victim. If this was a one-off thing (i.e. if we had just invented a technology that’s super-specialized at math and would never extend to nothing else), I assure you mathematicians would be getting no coverage, and they would just have to find a different career and move on.
But, nope. You’re next, and everyone is next. Blue collar workers are the only safe ones for now, but that’s only until robotics catches up which won’t take long either. No one has any moat against AI. That’s why it’s getting so much coverage, and yet most people are just so fucking dumb and self-centered and egotistical that they can’t think of the OBVIOUS implications and next steps from this, all they can think of is “why can’t these damn mathematicians stop crying?” It’s really impressive to me how some people think whatever the fuck it is that they do is somehow safe from AI.
We’ll basically be dependent on the good intentions of governments and private companies to share the enormous benefits with us, as opposed to keeping it all to themselves. And I genuinely can’t understand why anyone thinks the latter will happen, lol.
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u/PlacidoFlamingo7 6h ago
I mean this only 25% rhetorically, but has any mathematician actually lost their job? I assume they haven’t and are now studying these proofs
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u/clearlysnarky 3h ago
It hasn’t even been a week since these results have been published. No faculty will immediately fire all their mathematicians less than a week after this news, as it would cause obscene and needless backlash.
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u/sephy009 6h ago
This hasn't eliminated the way the vast majority of mathematicians make a decent living. By the very nature of them no one makes money off of random hard problems that go unsolved for decades.
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u/Duckpoke 4h ago
I’m in software dev so I’ve felt this for awhile but it’s still relatively far out from replacing anyone. Even on regular sized PRs the amount of corrections our principals flag on code review is enormous
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u/clearlysnarky 3h ago edited 3h ago
What kind of company are you working on? Probably not a very large one if you have principals reviewing PRs.
I work at a Big Tech company, and it’s pretty much a consensus with other colleagues who work at top tech companies that basically the only job remaining is implementing the means to allow AI to access relevant documentation, internal tools like CI logs, debugging tools, and building and refining the harnesses for E2E testing and reviewing.
A year ago what you said would be correct: human reviews still caught a lot of issues. Nowadays I see AI reviews catching very relevant issues that almost no human would’ve caught. The rate of false positives has almost dropped to zero too. And most of the PRs with issues are from late adopters of AI (i.e. mostly human-written PRs). PRs made with Opus 5.5 or Astra rarely have any critical issues.
We still have jobs, but the writing is on the wall. We already had layoffs, and more are incoming. Every day it becomes clearer that, whatever humans are still better than AI, is simply due to lack of harnesses and access to the relevant context. And every day more work is done to improve this, and every day more kinds of work gets delegated to AI as they outperform human developers.
If you solve a problem that AI couldn’t solve on its own, you’re basically pressured by leadership to find out why and implement the means to allow AI to solve that by itself next time. Refuse and you’re on the chopping block.
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u/Dedelelelo 3h ago
big tech has not had ai related layoffs in a while actually started rehiring more juniors so i’m doubtful that you actually work there
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u/clearlysnarky 3h ago
What the fuck lmao. Literally ALL of the FAANG’s had layoffs this year. And all developers at those companies are basically working on building the harnesses to enable AI to do all the work. It’s basically an open secret / the elephant in the room that every single developer is getting pressured to work almost full time on building AI harnesses to allow AI to do all of their work (thus buying them some more time until this is complete), and if you refuse you’ll quickly get PIP’d out due to “not adapting to working with AI”. I wish I was lying lmao, don’t know what to tell you but human developers have 1-2 years left of employment at best, and so do companies that rely on human developers.
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u/Dedelelelo 3h ago
😂😂sure doesn’t change the fact that u dont work in big tech
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u/clearlysnarky 3h ago
I didn’t know it sounded that impressive to you. Wasn’t meant as a brag in any way. Thanks though.
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u/Dedelelelo 3h ago
😂meta is the only one that directly tried and it completely blew up in their face. has nothing to do with impressive or not it’s just obvious you’re not acc working there
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u/AP_in_Indy 4h ago
Currently seeing this happen to me in software engineering. I am indeed anxious. Excited, but anxious.
And I work with AI tools all day every day, too. So I'm effectively responsible for putting myself out of work.
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u/Redd1tCamp69 1h ago
Do I still get the same purchasing power I currently have? Because that’s the real question you’re asking
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u/MrSnowden 6h ago
Sure, but if the bro in the OP article successfully proved his theorem (or whatever his field is) he would immediately destroy the careers of everyone else working on that topic. Or they would have to him. And then they would pivot and start working to build on that result. Which they can and should do here, but this time with AI instead of against it. So mathematicians should all immediately a) understand that AI proofs. Which is likely hard, but not as hard as doing the proof B) learn how to work with AI as a co-worker. And c) pivot to build on the work done and extend it.
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u/ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL 4h ago
I mean yes. Because you're describing total societal collapse. If I cant even pivot into some menial job then we've got big problems.
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u/pixiegod 8h ago
The problem I see here is we humans still need to understand the solution otherwise the answer in an of itself is worthless.
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u/reality_comes 7h ago
The answer to most of these problems isnt useful anyway.
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u/Bbrhuft 6h ago
That does not mean that Math, that lacks an obvious practical benefit or influence, should not be studied. Similarly in particle physics, there little practical benefit in studying particle physics equations that predicted the existence of the Higgs Boson and even more exotic particles. Knowing these things didn't reduce hunger, cure diseases and make more efficient solar panels, may be it generated a community that can do these things as a side benefit.
However, it is a worthy aim to simply seek to understand the universe of Math and Physics for its own sake, explore the deeper reality and structure of existence itself, regardless of there's no use for these equations or solutions, and insights.
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u/Biggandwedge 7h ago
If they cured your cancer, would you need to know how?
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u/Eastern-Ad-3586 7h ago
I think so.
I’m a doctor and people refuse vaccines all the time. I think if they understood anything about immunology they wouldn’t do that
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u/Head-Ad-6738 6h ago
No. But I do need to know that it has been tested on 1000 other humans with similar demographics as me though, which is what clinical trials are. I'll leave exact drug pathways mechanism understanding to the experts.
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u/sparafuxile 1h ago
If you experimentally know that an + bn = cn has no integer solution up to n=1000000000, would you need to know beyond that?
That's the difference between cancer research and mathematics.
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u/pregnantant 7h ago
If a doctor claims to have cured your cancer, but admits to not actually knowing if it's cured, would you feel safe?
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 6h ago
What a dumb analogy. We know if the math works or doesn’t.
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u/Biggandwedge 6h ago
You could know the outcome without knowing how you got there. If it was proven to work then yes, I would feel safe.
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u/KanishkT123 6h ago
It's going to be a weird kind of field when one track of your field is able to accelerate so far ahead that there are thousands and millions of machine proofs that show something, and at the same time the human track of the field is decades behind.
That might inevitably end up being what happens, but it will make many of the best mathematical minds quit the field entirely. I think that's a loss.
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u/torrso 8h ago
Those problems have been up for grabs forever. Somebody was hoped to solve them eventually. Now you can focus on something using those solutions.
Same happened to coders and a bunch of other fields, you're not unique. If it was some Einstein100 human, would you complain that this one savant is ruining the careers of everyone? Aren't you using Einstein's and a bunch of other people's discoveries?
Boo hoo.
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u/kyle787 8h ago
Will your tune change when it comes for you?
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u/SacralScenes 7h ago
No because what’s the alternative, we leave those math problems unsolved? No more AI in cancer research or math theory because?
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u/kyle787 7h ago
That isn't what I'm suggesting nor would I want that. I would like people to display more empathy to those in this position, because I promise that you will feel differently when it is happening to you.
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u/DrobnaHalota 7h ago
Like cancer researches being upset AI cured cancer and they don't have a job anymore? The only reason mathematicians are not laughed out of a room when they say things like this is that no one considers math that important at least not immediately.
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u/Conscious-Map6957 7h ago
It already came for many other professions, nobody is crying like this except the mathematicians. And I didn't see them having a different tune when other professions were being automated away.
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 1h ago
What you fail to understand is *no one is unique when you have a technology that can learn everything you know and do*.
It's not just these mathematician. This will come for everyone eventually.
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u/charlies-ghost 6h ago edited 6h ago
I am an AI Solutions Architect. My job is to automate everyone else's job away.
In my defense, automation is inevitable. Every time we've ever used automation to replace human labor, no one ever wanted to go back to the manual way doing things.
There may be a time when human written proofs are considered anachronistic, where no one would ever dream of solving the hardest problems without an agent to assist.
In the future, mathematicians are going to solve problems by providing a framework of tools to get to an answer, then let the agent figure out how to assemble those tools together.
Then, the job of the mathematician is to simplify, beautify, and polish agentic proofs into something useable by the rest of the field.
This one researcher thinks mathematics is over. But I personally think we are seeing the fruits of the technological singularity bear out. I think we're entering a new golden age of mathematical and scientific discovery using agentic algorithms that "think" at the speed of light.
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 2h ago
...they won't have the capacity to 'simplify, beautify, and polish agentic proofs into something useable by the rest of the field' because you won't be able to train up new mathematicians.
Actually *doing* the thing is what gives you the capacity. If you offload it all onto something else and are new to the field, the *thing* is the one with the capacity, not you.
This argument makes zero sense. Human brains are lazy. This is why A.I. is currently 'working'. When we realise that we're causing our own cognitive demise, things will change.
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u/culinaryinterests123 44m ago
maybe you are lazy and projecting. there are people who love mathematics and would do it just for the love of it. just like there people who write free open source programs. those are the people you will lead their fields
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 36m ago edited 33m ago
No, I'm not. Our brains run on glucose. It's a well-known psychological principle that if we can make our brains and thinking more efficient, we will: this is why cognitively offloading tasks into an organizer helps, because we have more cognitive space for other things. It's just a tendency of the human brain to preserve glucose (as evolutionarily there wasn't much around).
It's also why we use heuristics when thinking and operating in the world, rather than always deeply thinking out and planning all of our actions. Fast thought, good enough algorithm = mostly fine action. This preserve glucose.
Now, take the principle and apply it to an A.I. This is why more and more people are using A.I. to perform many different and yet common tasks, including offloading their thinking for them. Look up the trend of people asking A.I. who to vote for in the next election in America: People are becoming so lazy, they don't want to make up their minds about something that directly impacts their lives and socio-economic future. Which is crazy: but that's the consequences of A.I.
'there are people who love mathematics and would do it just for the love of it' <-- You know what happens when you take away a word that means something? Say 'mathematics'. If that word vanishes from textbooks and dictionaries, in a generation or two, most people won't know what 'mathematics' is. If A.I. takes over, why would their be mathematicians? Why would anyone need to use mathematics, outside of basic counting etc.
They won't. So there will be no 'doing X for the love of it'. That's like saying 'in 30 years, people will be programming for the love of it'. Maybe, or maybe we won't have computers anymore because everything will be centralised, so why would a human need a computer? They have their A.I. The A.I. will do everything. And how can you afford a computer on Universal Basic Income? And why would you need photoshop, excel, word, any of that software? A.I can do all of that, but why do you need to write documents? To what end?
Why would you know about mathematics if you've never had access to the books that teach you about it and you've just relied on A.I.?
There are many assumptions built into your statements that may not be even remotely possible in the future that is coming.
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u/aHumanRaisedByHumans 3h ago
The problem with this idea is that the AI should and will be better at doing the human assignment to simplify, beautify, and polish the proofs too. So they will.
Anything a human could do, AI will be able to do it better. So unless it's just a law to let the human do some things, and ASI somehow decides to obey laws, the human assigned part you wrote won't be done by a human either
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u/IndependentOpinion44 1h ago
When this bubble bursts (and it will) I hope everyone remembers the people who were so willing and eager to fuck over the rest of humanity.
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u/Guilty-Sprinkles 10m ago
They won’t. Bubbles don’t burst all at once, the laid off don’t magically find new jobs, the people who jumped on new tech to replace other people all get golden parachutes.
It’s solid reasoning that the bubble will burst, but naive to think there will be any justice served.
And calling you naive makes me a hypocrite because I’m pretty sure I’ve said what you have, word for word many times.
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u/simulacrumlain 5h ago
Such a roundabout way of saying you don't give a shit that everyone is going to lose their jobs and things are going to get very very bad before that changes
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u/charlies-ghost 5h ago edited 3h ago
You are inserting a bunch of words into my mouth that I never said and don't agree with.
I promise you, I would not work in this industry if I felt my work was unethical.
You think everyone's going to lose their jobs, but I think we're going to see an explosion of people entering the market with new ideas that would have been ludicrous or impossible a decade ago.
I've already started building out my entrpeneurial ideas. I've written more code using AI agents in the past year than I've written in prior 20 years combined. The amount of code I've been able to churn out used to require 10 full-time software engineers.
There are so many highly intelligent people who couldn't contribute to the free market because they just didn't have a multi-million dollar budget to hire a software development team, or a movie studio, or a team of graphic artists to realize their big ideas.
But now, the barrier is so low that anyone can enter the market with any idea, no matter how big or how niche. Things that seemed sci-fi 10 years ago will become a reality within our lifetime.
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u/kueso 1h ago
Why is that good? Mind elaborating?
Automation is not always good. Look at fast fashion. Clothing is so easy to manufacture that we’d rather make cheap clothing that we can throw away 6 months later after having worn it three times rather than investing in one piece that will last us 3 years. We would rather manufacture and consume 100 plastic bottles of water instead of investing in a glass and wooden hand made vessel. We manufacture furniture that is accessible and cheap yet breaks in 1 year.
I’m really trying to think through people selling to me how “fast software” is so good. The only thing pushing companies towards AI adoption is literally fear. No one actually cares about delivering for the user. They just want to make sure they don’t get wiped off the map by fast and cheap software.
Not saying AI is bad for learning, iterating, brain storming, or whatever. But, pitching fast software as good automation needs a good argument other than “fast is better”.
What systems are we building? Are they good for humanity? Or is it just one persons’ idle dream that they decided to prompt into reality?
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u/cobbleplox 50m ago
Your positive perspective relies on limited AI capabilities, and I guess we'll see about that. Personally I think "wishing things" is a surprisingly resilient skill (and it may surprise some people that it's actually a skill, especially when it comes to communicating the wish), but that's still based on limited capabilities.
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u/_HowlsMovingAsshole_ 39m ago
Maybe AI can figure out how to avoid someone using AI to make a severe pandemic. Or maybe nobody really cares about alignment and we're all fucked because people just want to be first to unleash a demigod.
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u/AgentHamster 4h ago
There are so many highly intelligent people couldn't contribute to the free market because they just didn't have multi-million dollar budget to hire a software development team, or a movie studio, or a team of graphic artists to realize their big ideas.
I have no clue how things are going to end up, but one thing I want to point out is that the same aspects of AI that allow low barrier to entry to the market also means that there are low barriers to in-house solutions as well as low barriers to reverse engineering an existing market solution. I have no doubt that AI will make it a lot easier to execute on ideas, but I don't have the same degree of faith that this will actually increase the value of great ideas - it's going to be incredibly difficult to maintain a first movers advantage.
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u/WingedTorch 4h ago edited 4h ago
„let‘s keep doing extra work cause people have less if they don’t do more for less“
Completely insane take. Stop blaming the engineers who find ways of making life easier and start fixing a broken system that fails to make sure that everyone profits from those improvements instead of giving more money to billionaires.
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u/RainScum6677 2h ago
You know, very soon your job will probably be RSIed away, too. We're basically there. It's likely months away from happening. All a part of the new golden age of discovery. The thing is, one of these discoveries will be that we are, all of us, obsolete. Im also working with AI, daily, and put a lot of my time into automation as a software developer.
It's funny how we know what our final destination is, and all we can do is accelerate towards it.
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u/CousinDerylHickson 2h ago
Just curious, what does your day-to-day job look like? Always wondered what goes in to actually making AI
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u/postexitus 1h ago
Are you a mathematician? You speak more like a salesperson (and a bad one at that).
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u/Marklar0 1h ago
There are no "fruits" here. Imagine writing down a complicated integral and then announcing that the computer calculated it to as many digits of precision as you want. Do you think mathematicians would find any value in that? Similarly, calculating a proof with a huge amount of computation and walking away doesnt give anything to the discipline. And it doesnt give anything to the general public either. Its all expensive marketing wank, at the cost of messing with people's projects.
The actual fruits are in the frameworks and tools you talk about, and OpenAI has now started dismantling our ability to produce those frameworks and tools in the future. They are launching math into a dead end that will take a while to recover from.
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u/Curlaub 8h ago
Im sure lots of people lost their jobs when the printing press was invented. Advancement does that.
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u/redlightsaber 8h ago
They did. As did the railroad, the automobile, the line-factories.
Never this fast, though. Never to so many fields at once. I'm surprised not many people have realised the moment we're in, yet.
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u/NevyTheChemist 7h ago
Yeah the board utilty AI brings makes a lot of jobs worthless.
It's going to be very scary for the next decade.
The shit kids learn in school is going to be obsolete before they even finish.
I'm not sure anyone can really keep up.
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u/Famous-Garlic3838 7h ago
NO ONE IS BUYING MY BUGGY WHIPS !!
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 1h ago
They did. They didn't lose access to all adjacent jobs forever, though.
The standard answer seems to be 'learn a trade'. And when those are automated out to?
We have these fields and jobs so people can make a living and advance themselves in life. If access to that is removed, what happens then?
People keep point to a UBI, but what's the incentive to allow people to live well? It'll be a pittance because what made a person valuable was their experience, skills, and intelligence.
Why would these people pay you well when they no longer need any of that?
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u/Repulsive-Pangolin-6 8h ago
Sorry lil bro, 12hrs or 40yrs for the same output, the choice is obvious.
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u/LadyBugPuppy 4h ago
Hi, I’m a mathematician. Most mathematicians do achieve new results every year. We publish a lot. The problems that stay open are not worked on pointlessly to no avail. They often motivate smaller problems and creative new directions. People organize conferences around special topics, collaborate, generate new research directions. So, some slowness is actually useful.
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u/almostsweet 6h ago edited 6h ago
So, wait a second. Are they telling me that the entire field of mathematics for the past century has been 1 Einstein supergenius away from being brought to their knees in utter tears because someone got to the answers before them after they danced around without solving these problems for 40 - 180 years?
I didn't know they were that fragile.
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u/Jwanito 6h ago
everything is fragile compared to the tech billionares ability to crush others to gain more money.
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u/almostsweet 4h ago
I gather that you just wanted the busywork, not the solutions?
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u/Jwanito 3h ago
i dont know, i guess i just want people that take joy from the suffering from others to not do that.
but thats unrealistic.
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u/almostsweet 2h ago
Let's take the Navier-Stokes solution, which is one of the main pain points mathematicians have been unhappy about since not solving it was their pride and joy.
You do realize this will help engineers design safer airplanes, model ocean current accurately helping us repair our planet, predict extreme weather events saving lives.
Beyond that other solutions will help cryptography, security, banking, medicine, biology, physics and computing.
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u/send-moobs-pls 12m ago
Academia has a huge culture rot problem, whole swaths of them barely have a thought for the purpose of research and theory being to eventually have applications especially in mathematics, everything is all about getting your name on papers and impressing each other with how many pages of proofs they can write. Classic goodharts tragedy
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u/DrobnaHalota 7h ago
Would anyone complain cancer researchers are out of job if AI cured cancer? Is it that what mathematics is not that important for society in comparison, so we even entertain the idea rate of advancement is less important then this guy keeping his job?
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u/CoolStructure6012 6h ago
What is the end product of cancer research? And what is the end product of esoteric theoretical math?
They are seeking categorically different goals which your comparison ignores.
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u/send-moobs-pls 7m ago
Maybe we will get a new wave of mathematicians who remember that the purpose of research is the goal of ultimately achieving new applications
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u/stuartullman 7h ago
lol. right, i was about to solve them too, just give me another century or two
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u/FalconBurcham 6h ago
My English major ass is feeling just a little bit smug, I gotta admit… welcome to the club, friends. Now do try to keep up with the drink orders! 😆
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u/Fit_Cheesecake_4000 1h ago
This will come for every field and every knowledge-based endeavour.
Then, when robotics becomes cheaper, it will come for every labour-based endeavour.
Saying 'automating everything was inevitable' is like saying 'I like to not be here anymore, go ahead, and thank you'.
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u/Secret_Mind_1185 1h ago
I think AI is going to open up new fields of mathematics and agents will be the new calculators to do the new age mathematics.
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u/CogentKen 1h ago
They miss the point. It's no longer about finding knowing. It's about learning how to hold it, intelligently.
Mathematics has a new mountain of knowledge. The goal now is to learn how to map that larger range, to find our way to humans comprehending what holds it all together.
It's no longer a rote grind, it's a sweeping search, synthesis, and analysis across deep ranges, till we lift it from coherent noise on computer screens to a cogent, shareable understandings in our conscious minds.
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u/jtmonkey 1h ago
But also. Like. What was the math working towards if not advancement in technology and physics. Like this is what math has been working toward from the beginning right?
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u/Brilliant_Team5254 1h ago
At the end of the day they are just human beings like everyone else. For an advanced AI, there is no big difference between the best graduate of the École Normale who gets his Fields Medal at 28 and the guy who fixes your AC. But they both have kids, a family, friends.
I think for a lot of them it’s a humbling experience, but it will make them better humans, if not better mathematicians.
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u/Artemis_1944 47m ago
I mean, I get it, it's like reading a book and knowing how it ends. But at the same time, all you know is the end, you have no idea how the end got there.
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u/Spunge14 8h ago
I understand how terrifying this must be for their livelihood, but it's so unbelievably strange to treat having all of the greatest mysteries of your universe now accessible at your fingertips. Perhaps there is a mathematical culture that will die, but interpreting that as the death of your field is ridiculous.
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u/KareemPie81 8h ago
What’s the real world impact of solving these problems
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u/No-Philosopher3977 6h ago
We won’t know as of right now for a while . The math however eventually will be used to affect countless areas of our lives
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u/ohthetrees 8h ago
Who but mathematicians are equipped to work with AI to push into new areas of math knowledge? Pivot boys, don’t be the blacksmith, be the mechanic!
As a software developer, I feel it too, but just asking for it to all stop isn’t going to work.