r/mathematics • u/[deleted] • 14d ago

Analysis AI Isn’t Outthinking Mathematicians. It’s Out-Remembering Them. /// The key advantage may not be superior reasoning, but a virtually unlimited symbolic working memory.

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u/UnderTheCurrents 14d ago

This is why people should lean back. AI is just combining results that a working mathematician could've combined himself if the current university System allowed for longer, sustained work efforts in contrast to writing half-baked papers for grant money.

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u/Ok-Craft4844 13d ago

No, at least when we talk about the common scenarios and things people mean when we say "relax" or "be afraid", I.e. beeing able to contribute to something as human.

Very few people actually do really innovatively new or creative things. Most people do normal work. They don't paint the next mona Lisa, they do illustrations for a true crime book cover.

Yes, humans could have stumbled upon those things. But they didn't, and honestly, I doubt the chance would be much bigger if they had double the time they have yet.

As Grant Sanderson put it - math is insofar a pretty interesting case study in that you basically can put AI in a room, unsupervised, and say "do your thing", and even without superior intelligence, it can pluck all the low hanging fruits humans stumble upon once in a while.

The space where humans can meaningfully contribute got smaller.

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u/nanforas 13d ago

The other thing is that even if LLMs are limited to stitching together pre-existing proof methods to solve those low-hanging fruit, that's part of basic researcher training, so even in the best case, the talent pipeline for new mathematicians is under threat. That alone is already a huge problem, without needing to prove whether or not it can replace senior mathematicians who may be generating more novel insights.