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Comment by ordersofmag | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely unclear on what you mean here. Do you mean: 1. Most mathematicians are currently largely paid as part of their academic job (as a faculty member) and will continue to do that work (including the research part) even if extra-mural grant funding goes away. That seems entirely plausible to me.

Or do you mean? 2. Real mathematicians will continue to devote a significant part of their life/energy to mathematics research as a hobby, even if no one is paying them (in any way) to do it? That seems more of a reach and makes me wonder if many currently folks current employed as mathematicians aren't 'Real mathematicians' from your point of view.

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The drive to research is internal. It is occasionally interrupted by boring physical needs such as eating, sleeping etc

So we should return to a renaissance world where only the wealthy or sponsored can do research, teach, and promote the wonders of creativity. Just hope the oligarchs give us prols enough gruel to create our own solipsistic knowledge no one else knows much less cares about, entertained by LLMs optimized to placate our desires and extract money/attention.

A world of cheap AI makes research available to anyone who can afford to run the AI, in a similar way to how ubiquitous cheap computing hardware has made software development possible at the personal level.

As a sometime experimental scientist and occasional manufacturing engineer, this is hilarious!

Discoveries for abstract theory, entertainment, and perhaps regurgitating media, or even basic education can be done with the help of LLMs, but you can't make anything. You can't test anything. You aren't living in the real world. You'll just be lulled into the false belief that everything is simple and fine and beautiful, just as you always wanted, and as airplanes fall from the sky.

Hey, maybe it could work on Cosmology, if you gave it access to the data?

You are absolutely right!

I'mn talking about math research. Of course you can test things: does the formalized proof check? This is what makes automated math such an attractive target for AI.

> A world of cheap AI makes research available to anyone who can afford to run the AI

So, only the wealthy or sponsored?

As someone said below, many research on the side for a decade while having an ordinary job/life. It's often the best environment. No great research was reached at IAS.

With the assistance of AI, we are entering a golden age of individual math research without the need of huge institutions

Uh, John von Neuman didn't discover anything of significance at IAS? Just Hilbert Spaces and Computer Architecture, forget String Theory or Godel's Incompleteness, LOL!

New best prompt:

Write me a really cool math proof that will make me lots of money fast!

Why not let it just spit out the next token on its own without interference, if you can barely fool yourself into believing you understand what it proves... or hallucinates.

No, we should advance to a post-scarcity world where everyone can do research, teach, and promote the wonders of creativity because no-one has to work for a living.

I don't expect Sam Altman and his ilk to deliver such a world to us, but the problem is Altman, not the tech itself.

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