Soon AI mathematics will be 10x or 100x or 1000x more productive than humans in the proofing theorems business. Mathematics of old style is dead, they should develop ideas how to deal with that as a math community.
If a human doesn't understand the proof, it might be useful for certain kinds of engineering, but not really that useful for mathematics except as an existence test.
I don't known, can't we just also indirectly observe the wide platonic landscape of mathematics through observing AI results which humanity could not produce in a 1,000,000 years.
I imagine this will become one kind of branch of mathematics.
> But solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight. Forgetting this in the world of AI may turn the tool against the primary goal.
No one is paying mathematicians to develop a conceptual understanding. If the signal for who is “winning” math in academia disappears mathematicians will have a big problem
This is true. There can still be some funding for recreational aesthetic mathematics, like you can get some funding for various art projects or philisophy, literature, poetry, general humanities and community-building projects or sports funding or things like that. But currently many mathematicians are funded by the public purse with the understanding that this contributes to science and engineering and technological development at some point. I'm not saying that intellectual pursuits for the sake of human mental satisfaction is not worth funding in a society. The question is the amount of people needed. Tax payers pay for it. You have to tell them why, and why so many people need to be funded to do that. Many people have various hobbies they enjoy. But generally they don't get government money for doing it as the general rule. Maybe in a post-scarcity world.