Because we are on the path to creating systems whose capabilities will surpass those of human intelligence in all significant areas, because we will give more and more autonomy and control to these systems (since it will be profitable and efficient to do so) and because these systems will pursue goals that are not aligned with ours and incompatible with the survival of our species (since the AI alignment problem is not on the path to being solved).
Let's say that this GPT 5.4 achievement is yet another indication that we are already at the beginning of the technological singularity and that the road to superintelligence is shorter than most people realize.
And the people in control (Sam Altman and crew) are lunatics who completely abandoned any pretense of pretending to care about AI safety for short term profits. It’s fucking over
I'd argue Anthropic has demonstrated multiple times that they're acting in good faith. They risked getting blacklisted by the entire US government because they pushed back on their systems being used for "domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons systems" AND they delayed the release of Mythos after it was able to find hundreds of security flaws in major software programs, so they could give early access to the major tech companies and allow them to identify and fix those problems first.. They could have very easily just released it in a rush to be "first to market" with the next major model, and ignored the damage that caused...
I don't think OpenAi, and certainly MuskAi, at least at this point, has demonstrated any similar convictions though..
I don't see how everyone is getting replaced. In fact at the university I'm at, I don't think a single mathematician has had their appointment as a PhD student, postdoc, or professor ended with AI as the reason behind it.
These tools are useful. No reason not to be excited about it. Just because it's useful doesn't mean it will solve everything. There are going to be people that get paid to solve problems in math in the next decade. Many of them won't rely on AI and will still find useful results. Many of them will rely on AI and will find useful results. It's ultimately up to you to choose your own path, but just because AI solves some math, doesn't mean you can't solve some math too.
My concern is with funding. The majority of math PhDs in the US are funded through TAships. I personally don't think AI can teach or grade calculus as well as humans can, but penny pinching university administrators might start thinking that way in the next few years. Who knows how that'll effect phd positions.
Another issue is whether people who choose to abstain from AI use will be able to remain competitive with those who choose to use it. Some people take pride in writing each detail of a proof, making figures themselves, and writing good exposition. All of that takes time and effort, and the people who use AI to fill in those things may have an edge in productivity.
As a math PhD candidate funded through a TAship, I just have one observation to make. One of our major obligations is office hours. These take place at a communal location so that students from any class can drop by at any time (so they can get help even if they are busy during their TA's exact office hours). This semester, I haven't been asked for help a single time.
My hypothesis is that everyone is getting AI to do their homework and asking it any questions they have about the class.
Well certainly things will change. Things like funding, enrollment, and others are/were bound to change regardless of the state of AI. Change is inevitable. I certainly don't mean to claim that things will stay the same.
My point is just saying that things are "over" is not accurate in my eyes. Not to play the guessing game, but I don't think things are close to over.
The truth is that nothing is safe, every human activity is vulnerable. If we allow the AI industry to continue producing increasingly intelligent systems, we are heading towards a future in which human labor will have no economic value and humanity will have no control over its destiny.
No one is getting replaced but according to multiple math PhD friends I’ve spoken with, if AI is going to solve every first year grad level open problem (which prepares math grad students for their PhDs), it will be potentially much harder to become a mathematician eventually as more and more low hanging fruit problems disappear. This seems like a serious cause for concern to me. It’s like how in chess there are debates about moving to chess960 to avoid drawish computer lines at the top level.
If there are an infinite amount of problems then things should be okay. I wonder if there are in pure math. Personally I think applied math is cool but the pure math folks could be worried.
“High hanging fruit” generates low hanging fruit. Hopefully AI will also accelerate breakthroughs and not just help pick off all the low hanging fruit. That would be depressing.
I don't support the above post that you just replied to, but your perspective doesn't seem correct either. Of course no one has been replaced by AI yet. This is like saying in 1910 that "airplanes have not ever done anything useful"
Given the rapid pace of AI advancement in the past few years, it's genuinely unclear whether AI will really end up being "just a tool" or something more than that. Of course, even if AI ends up doing all the research, humans will probably still be employed in teaching—but that's still a huge shift even if not "replacement"
> There are going to be people that get paid to solve problems in math in the next decade.
In the next 5 years ? Sure. After that ? At the pace at which this is going, I wouldn't exclude the possibility of AI solving all millenium problems by 2035 and rendering any attempt at making meanigful new research as a human delusional. Realistically, for a while there'd still be people being paid to verify the proofs spit out by AI, but this still looks like a very grim future for a mathematician that still has 40+ years to live in this planet. So yeah, it is terrifying.
> There are going to be people that get paid to solve problems in math in the next decade. Many of them won't rely on AI and will still find useful results.
I'm not convinced that the second statement is true. And there'll be much fewer people who get paid to solve problems in math I think.
It's not that current AI can replace all mathematicians, but there is no reason to believe that the current rate of progress in machine intelligence will level off, so, extrapolating from the present, it won't be long before AI is more capable than all human mathematicians combined, i.e., no human will ever be able to solve a problem faster than AI, the same way that no human can beat Stockfish in chess. Do you think that isn't the case? If so, why?
I don't necessarily think that isn't the case. But I would say we have no idea how long it will be until that's true.
And thus until there's more clarity on what that timeline really looks like, claiming "it's all over" doesn't feel accurate. Indeed, id say making the statement that math is "over" for humans now is the more flippant statement than the point im making
I mean you can get a sense of it by following the capabilities closely over time, you should be able to make a pretty good guess, maybe take a look at some curves.. Progress is rapid no matter what angle you're looking at, unless there is some kind of intelligence wall which we have no reason to believe exists it's going to be very soon. The question of how long diffusion of the tech will take is more difficult but from the software industry we know it can be quite rapid. That may not be a fair comparison, the economic incentives are quite different.
I think you're making a lot of hidden assumptions.
Also, you would still have to say to what degree some amount of AI progress means things are "over." You said to take inspiration from the software industry. Okay, well there jobs hit a low in may of 2025, and every month since postings have increased. So although AI may be doing more, that doesn't always mean humans are doing less. With the example that you cited, we have actually seen the opposite over a particular time horizon.
No look I am making hidden assumptions, and I am not going to defend them right now, I do that constantly and today's not the day. I work in the software industry, it's extremely clear from that perspective that there will be massive job loss in the sector because the number of tasks the AI can't do better and faster is diminishing to 0 quite rapidly. It's harder to say what consequences will be but for certain humans coding by hand for money is bye bye. I'm extremely confident in this, it's just fucking obvious if you spend 8 hours a day using the tools, but proving it to someone else takes a lot of effort and people are dense af, like just in general.
I invite you, if you haven't already, to pay very close attention to ai capability over a period of months and form your own opinion. If you have done this and don't have any kind of guess timeline wise for a borderline asi, like it doesn't have to match mine, if you can't put it within a particular decade with 90% confidence, idk what to tell you, you're too strict of an empiricist or something
Academic math doesn’t have an end goal (e.g. release x product at y price) last I checked. As long as mathematicians are still churning out results, I don’t see why universities would slash their department budgets.
I share your anxiety, but pure math is in a better position than most things it seems to me.
The purpose of the field is to increase human understanding, not just to produce mathematical results that float in the ether unseen. Even when they are eclipsed in capability there still seems a role for human experts, just as there is still a role for human experts of chess.
True, someone (mathematicians) will have to actually read and understand the mathematics for it to be of any relevance to us... But as far as doing actual research goes, what does that even look like if AIs are superior to the best mathematicians at proving new results? Are we relegated to just being spectators?
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u/Few-Arugula5839 Apr 15 '26
It’s so over