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Comment by voidfunc | Hacker News Reader

Because it means mathematical discovery can largely be automated away from academics. This is the beginning.

Humans propose; AI will dispose.

It's not clear from this progress that AI can formulate conjectures despite this new ability to solve them. So mathematicians still look like they have a job. Though instead of spotting far-off landmarks it's sounds more like they'll be chasing waves on a beach.

The beginning of what?

The beginning of the end of human thinking being valuable enough to justify university's existences among many others.

Were in an unprecedented time where the value of knowledge is about to be crushed.

Maybe for STEM. The humanities seems kind of safe to me since there's an element of it which cannot be divorced from human opinion and interpretation. It's not like STEM where the people pursuing the ends are largely fungible and the ends are objective (Heisenberg already believed scientific discoveries were inevitable and it didn't really matter who pursued them, someone would eventually find them)

What is the average value of humanities when the default is to write things with LLMs ? The same with maths.

Nope, it's about to be turboboosted if anything. I myself have already formulated countless proofs (AI assisted naturally) in the last few months, despite: a) not having access to any academic resources b) not being involved in any academic circles. This research is now being employed in my startup, delivering ground shattering results. I actually ran analysis a few weeks ago seeing how much real world capital I would have needed to cough up to fund my efforts so far and it's literally in the _billions_. With less than a $100k in tokens I have been able to effectively generate the value of Apple or Microsoft in the early 2000s. This is only the beginning. Wait until you start seeing single person NVIDIA startups popping up.

This "value" you talk about, is it past tense? A single iphone probably have more compute then the entire world had in the 1970s, would have cost at that point probably hundreds of millions. You will not sell the iphone for that amount today.

Not sure I agree with this take, but we're going to find out either way.

Have you ever heard of an S curve? Things will develop rapidly, then equalize. If they don't, we're at the singularity and I guess the end of time as we know it.

But I guess really bad things happen, cancer, radiation poisoning, torture, people have died in really horrendous ways, and I guess dying from some horrendous AI side effects is possible too. Yay.

Golden age of discovery and mass layoffs

People need to figuring out how to horde as much wealth as possible right now in the next 2-3 years. Jobs especially for knowledge workers are about to disappear.

I’m targeting maximum debt by about 2030. I’d rather have all the stuff I want while we try and build a new version of a functioning economy than have a ton of cash saved up.

It's funny we're possibly entering a golden age of thought, the dreams of the ancients, but we're all worried about capitalism, I think the problem is pretty obvious.

Maybe a golden age of thought for the machines, but possibly (I would even say likely on the current trajectory) a dark age for humanity.

I don't know, I get more work done now in a few hours than I used to in a day, so maybe the working week should be shrunk, that would solve things. The solution seems pretty easy - but then I'm not in the US.

This would be a largely positive solution for humanity, as long as AI remains "just an assistant". I don't think that we are heading that way. It's possible that, at some point, when the time you save becomes comparable to your full working week, your employer (or your clients, if you are self-employed) will discover that you are just a proxy between them and prompting directly the AI. Of course, if your job involves physical labour or requires physical presence or taking legal responsibility for something, you'll be fine for a bit longer (well, comparatively fine in a society plagued by widespread unemployment and social unrest).

The managers you have must be startlingly different from my experience.

Owner: Can you make the box red?

claude: sure

Owner: no not that box, the green one

...

Apart from this, how would things work in our current capitalist society when everything costs very little, all the scarcity drivers disappear. Things will change no doubt but not in the way everyone's scared of, I'm sure. It's going to be an interesting ride. Personally I think smarts are going to be needed even more to figure out what these ai's are saying, I think everyone really underestimates how little these skills exist

I’ve been thinking this as well. I imagine there is a wealth level x such that someone can escape the coming ubi welfare state. Anything under that you are fucked.

What do you mean by escape the UBI welfare state. Wouldn’t the UBI welfare state be the best case scenario?

Only if you believe that subsistence is ideal.

How? Are you thinking just normie savings or something post-money?

Any tips?

Predictions of mass layoffs from AI have been about as wrong so far as predictions of AI plateauing.

Not really. 93,116 tech employees laid off due to AI in 2026.

https://layoffs.fyi/ai-layoffs/

Purportedly due to AI, also a good reason to lay off people if you're company wants to save money but you don't want to spook investors.

Companies will blame layoffs on literally anything in order to disguise the real reasons, if it suits their interests.

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