Pure mathematics, almost by definition, doesn't typically argue the field is always or even often "useful" (for some other purpose or application).

But, as mathematicians learn and push forward, occasionally something like elliptic curves will emerge as having useful applications, making all that previously "pointless" specialized knowledge newly valuable.

Or advances in physics, that suddenly have a need for a specific mathematical underpinning to develop a theoretical framework. Like how Einstein benefited from Minkowski's work on hyperboloids to create a coherent mathematical description of spacetime.

It was the AI labs themselves not mathematicians who were happy to conflate proofs for open math problems with some kind of tangible technological advancement in the real world. They would surely prefer to be able to claim a cure for cancer vs. a math problem but that loop requires a lot more time/money/test tubes/etc and they need headlines now not in a decade.

And so, thanks to OpenAI/Anthropic, we're now in a world where thousands of crypto bots on X breathlessly hype up each new problem being solved that previously wouldn't have any got any attention beyond academia and passionate fans of math.

Hopefully this won't lead to a trough of disillusionment as more people start to feel like you, with mathematicians getting the blame for inflating the value of their work even though the hype was coming entirely from the labs not them.