>Most research mathematicians are employed as academics, and it's hard to see universities replacing teaching staff with AI even if that were possible.
If universities come to only need research mathematicians for teaching ability, then it would still gut the profession. You would presumably need far fewer of them for their research ability, and hopefully hire more people who can actually teach. It's strange that you don't see that as a threat to the profession. Lots of research mathematicians would lose their jobs even in this scenario.
>IMO giving a hypothetical AlphaMath to mathematicians, the same way Google gave AlphaFold to research chemists/biologists, would have resulted in far better PR
GPT-N isn't AlphaFold. I'm telling you AlphaFold is a bad analogy! AlphaFold has superhuman capabilities at one specialized subproblem - protein-structure prediction - embedded in a much larger biology/drug discovery pipeline. It doesn't replace the biologist or drug researcher, it just gives them a better instrument, and if you're not in the relevant professions it's essentially useless to you.
GPT-N is general purpose intelligence machine that can increasingly do chunks of work you would otherwise employ the mathematician or software developer to do.
Shanmu Jin is a perfect demonstration. A neurosurgery resident, not a research mathematician, who encountered the Crouzeix conjecture through his transcranial ultrasound research and used GPT-5.6 Sol to solve it (20+ year old longstanding problem).
In the AlphaFold story, the biologist gets a powerful new tool. In the Jin story, someone who isn't a mathematician can obtain research level mathematics and incorporate it into their research/code/business whatever without talking to a single human.
You're asking why they don't market GPT as "AlphaFold for Mathematicians". They don't because it's not.
>It's downright bizarre the way companies like Anthropic (primarily), and to a lesser extent OpenAI and anyone else, are themselves pushing the narrative of this tech may kill you, will take all your jobs, etc.
It's not that bizarre. It only seems strange if you think it's all a facade, "marketing" or whatever nonsense HN is convinced of. These are people who believe very strongly in what they are doing and in the potential of it. For these people, what you are asking them to do is actually incredibly slimy. And it might win some brownie points, but not for long.