And now you're hearing it from a guy who's one of the foremost, early proponents of AI in math.
> AI understanding of math is millions times more important than human's.
Important to whom?
We do math mostly for fun.
This is a persistent misconception that I see on HN (although not usually framed as abrasively as you have chosen to frame it).
Math is not an engineering discipline. Pure mathematics research is not done with an eye towards practical applications in other fields. You should think of it more like the humanities--it is done because it enriches the human experience (and it's not very expensive).
You could give us a black box oracle that could tell us, with 100% certainty, whether the 50 most famous and important open conjectures in math were true or false, and it would be more or less worthless. What does it actually get you? This isn't a rhetorical question.
AI in math is valuable only insofar as it ultimately helps drive human understanding.
There is another side of math that is more driven by practical applications: statistics and "applied math" and whatnot. This is what most people think of when they try to imagine math research, because it is much closer to the math that they have learned in their school education. A lot (but not all) of this math would get more value out of black box results, yes. But don't conflate this with the entire field of mathematics as a whole.
Yes, so? Still not "novel ideas and insights", which is what you responded to ... and the statement wasn't made by an AI skeptic.
> This is the future of pushing the frontier though. AIs need to be pushed to get better and better.
It would be far more honest to say "I want AIs to get better and better". But there are costs. What are you willing to accept?
> AI understanding of math is millions times more important than human's.
Ah, it seems that "replace humans with AIs" is not too much for you.
To whom is that more important? Not mathematicians.
Since you’re so certain, how long do you think it’ll be before all of the millennium problems are solved by AI (by leveraging the current literature)?
Math is also a matter of what is both interesting and useful to humans.
For some reason there is this virulent strain of anti-human AI rhetoric that machines will replace us. But what is the purpose of math as a field of study if we're not in the loop?
We make our problems up!
> For some reason there is this virulent strain of anti-human AI rhetoric
It’s just… nasty, isn’t it? Facts aside, one does have to wonder what motivates not the beliefs themselves, but the, well, frankly aggressive, way in which they’re expressed. Bitterness and envy felt towards those who have actually done the hard work and achieved things?
The question is to what extent AI will affect creation of new branches and elegant ideas in mathematics. This question applies to every area. Has it created an interesting new way of thought in any area other than those where massive tree search can be mistaken for such?
I don’t think it’s impossible but the evidence doesn’t point clearly to it.