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Comment by cryo32 | Hacker News Reader

As a mathematician by trade I think they’re overblowing it. You can choose to use it or not. I choose not to because I enjoy the process. But I’m not doing formal research or getting paid to do it these days.

I will note that the average corporate mathematical modelling is usually a fucking circus so adding AI might make it better.

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> You can choose to use it or not

This is becoming less and less true unless you're specifically talking about usage of it outside of a work environment. Many work places are requiring people to use it and/or tracking usage. I don't know about in academic settings, but I'd imagine it's becoming heavily used there too?

My academic connections that I keep in touch with never really left the 1990s. And no one is pushing them on AI.

Sure, but their peers (who do use AI) will out-publish them soon enough and solve the open problems before they do.

So your downside here is problems get solved faster?

The choice only remains if using it isn’t a huge multiplier. If it is a huge multiplier/accelerator, then for a while it will be ambiguous and the choice will remain. But as time goes on, the gains of using it will be so apparent and the advantage of the people who use it so great (in publication numbers, hiring, etc) that it will force others to.

I don’t say that with any particular relish. But I am skeptical of the choice angle past a certain point.

I don't think all universities or research agencies are particularly pressed on this. I mean my daughter is a notable researcher in a scientific field and they have absolutely no pressure to use AI to pump out papers or deliver value quickly.

I highly doubt there is any overt pressure in academia right now to use AI. It’s a relatively conservative institution. But there’s certainly pressure to publish (publish or perish being a common phrase for decades), and competition for jobs in academia is fierce. That’s what I meant in referring to long term pressure.

OOI, and my own total ignorance, what does a mathematician by trade do if they are not doing formal research? What does corporate modelling entail?

Well I rather like to be paid more than a mathematician so left academia rather quickly. In my case corporate modelling mostly involves making prediction models based on shitty data and metrics to make poorly contrived business decisions that lose millions of dollars.

lol.... but they are still data driven decisions, everyone loves those, especially when you lose millions of dollars and need to justify it.

Read the declaration. The article misrepresents it imo. It is not strongly opinionated.

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