logoalt Hacker News

coderenegadetoday at 8:07 AM1 replyview on HN

The problem with the article's line of thought is that mathematicians can't control what others do with models that are capable of generating proofs for hard problems. Sure, maybe there's a career in taking known proofs spat out by the oracle, and translating them for mortal digestion, but I'm not sure that's what most mathematicians signed up for.


Replies

encyclopediaitoday at 8:24 AM

Most mathematicians do compete for funding, based essentially on how many articles they can publish and where. Publication strongly favors problem solving. Universities are ranked on the same criteria.

What we see is a panic reaction to the fact that problem solving is "easy", which affects the future of the management of mathematics, not of mathematics itself.

Mathematicians are not luddites afraid of AI, is the academic publishing industry mixed with management interests speaking here.

If you look at the Leiden Declaration https://leidendeclaration.ai/ then you notice two weird IMO facts:

- that it was stirred by the International Mathematical Union Committee on Publishing

- that is a mixture of the older San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment DORA https://sfdora.org/read/ and recent fear of commercial AI competition