Yes, mathematics has been perhaps the purest human intellectual pursuit. Sure, many theorems turn out to have important applications in science and engineering, but the mathematical community has mostly escaped corporate interests. And for the reasons you mentioned about not needing any resources except your brain, it has been a uniquely human activity which showed us talent can come from anywhere, with stories like Ramanujan and Galois.

I hope that pure mathematics research can retain a strongly human component forever. It would sadden me immensely for human understanding of our mathematical world to wither and die, and for us to become ignorant consumers of wonders beyond our understanding just because our robots can do it better than we can. As far as applied research goes, I hope we will always be able to understand what we want to, but I have less qualms about becoming more scalable and efficient.