alt Hacker NewsChess and StarCraft are games. For many other intellectual activities, part of the satisfaction comes from contributing something meaningful to a collective effort. If a machine can do that orders of magnitude faster, for many people these activities become effectively pointless.
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elicash • today at 3:46 PM
This comment reminds me of the "run for fun" guy in Back to the Future Part III.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCVJIpSmEE
(This isn't to say I disagree with you.)
The funny thing about people comparing mathematical research in the days of LLMs to playing chess in the days of Stockfish is that it identifies the competitive nature, and hence status seeking attitude, of the mathematical research community. Chess is, of course, a competitive game with a winner and a loser. You "win" mathematical research by solving a longstanding unsolved problem.
There is this idea of advancing human knowledge and adding to the record of what people know in mathematical research that breaks the analogy down, somewhat. But most people aren't Perelman. They would happily take the million dollar prize. And it is out of the question to do anything other than put your name on the published paper.