As a non-mathematician who sometimes works on mathematical problems, I find this really puzzling. Why aren't mathematicians excited about the frontiers being unlocked by AI? The ability to discover more of the mathematical universe more readily?
For the mathematicians who still are in academia: I guess because the competition for research positions (in particular permanent ones) is already insane; they probably feel that AI makes this kind of competition even worse.
I want lower energy bills, lower rent, better understanding of health etc. more than I want theorems.
These efforts aren't mutually exclusive. I hate to be snide, but a lot of people would criticize you for being a mathematician because they want lower energy bills, lower rent, better understanding of health etc
And yes, nobody is that excited about vatsachak's mathematician-ism. it's just a thing he do. And now it's just a thing AI do.
I’m personally pretty excited by the results coming from these labs, but trying to dismiss the capital allocation objection with “but what about” is really silly.
Edit: I'm fine saying we're spending too much money on AI, in fact I agree, but "theorems" are not the only output of these companies. It's almost definitely not going to be worth the expenditure, but the benefits are not going to be only lean proofs
This is already the situation that we have: because of the fierce competition for temporary academic positions, and very little hope for permanent positions, large quantities of really good mathematicians leave academia and work in a job that has basically nothing with mathematics (many mathematicians consider these jobs as bullshit jobs, but they pay the bill).
The value of LLM is not "Ha curious look what it can do". It's not entertainment.
Well, I wouldn't generalize based off of the thread OP (and people on social media, including me). I think a lot of us are very excited! Most of my collaborators are, including myself.
There's a lot of simultaneous social change that's accompanying these tools, not all of which is positive. Agonized screaming is pretty loud, relatively speaking to the rest of the conversation.