I would suggest that hardly anyone in the public is asking you to increase efficiency. That is the argument you read on pro-AI VC forums and Reddit.
replyIn other words, it is a made-up argument. I think some mathematicians are either addicted (Feynman disease) or hope to make a breakthrough and somehow get credit. So they use "the public" to justify their habit.
The real public that is not on these forums wants academic freedom and independence from corporations. Both will suffer if you are entering soulless production pipelines.
The “real public” wants math to advance so that we can reap the benefits. We don’t care what tools you are or are not using, grant money will go to whichever group is making more progress.
replyEh, mathematicians themselves have started embracing it. Terence Tao talks about how LLMs will be on the frontlines, proving new results and humans will just be there to digest and explain them (if the LLMs don't end up being able to do that as well). It's valuable work but not what I really signed up for.
replyI suspect that the mathematicians who adapt best to AI will treat it like astronomers treat a telescope, as a source of possibly-interesting data to be analyzed. Maybe it looks like finished output, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready to show.
replySure, this is in agreement with some people's view that math will become an empirical science. Basically humans probing/mining the brain of an LLM.
replyplease do not quit
replyDon't really see much of a reason to keep going. LLMs basically have the whole mathematical corpus internalized, and can just practice endlessly through RL self play and autoformalization. Don't really see what my role would be in such a process other than passive appreciation and digestion.
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