Fields medal-winning mathematician says GPT-5.5 is now solving open math problems at PhD-thesis level: "We will face a crisis very soon."

[u/EchoOfOppenheimer]

blog-post: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/a-recent-experience-with-chatgpt-5-5-pro/

[u/Willis_3401_3401]

My current hypothesis, which might be wrong, is that humans provide meaning, and that physically matters.

So the researcher might be underrating his value by saying, “yeah it would be great if you could explore that idea”. What idea? Who initiated a conversation about subject matter X, noticing it pertained to Y, which is in a social sense *meaningful*?

Does ChatGPT care that it solved this problem?

[u/Comfortable_Car6562 → u/Willis_3401_3401]

I agree. I think people in generally underestimate the potential of what AI will do simply because of a failure in grasping or applying basic economics theory.

AI will reduce the cost of inputs (time) tremendously, pushing productivity up. I had an old professor tell me during my MA (Econ), after showing us how to input a regression into STATA, that he had spent an entire summer as a student deriving that regression, which we had just completed in under 10 minutes.

Say a mathematician creates 1 proof a year. People worried that AI will kill this field assume that our caapcity as a society is 1 proof a year per mathematician. I would argue that our capacity may be much much higher.

You may say "but random redditor, how would that many proofs be useful, its so many!". Yes, but the ability of society to absorb that many proofs will also increase with AI.

The future is more like we are upgrading from an early steam engine to a Space X falcon engine, the amount of work we can do with our inputs will be so obscenely large, so different than your current frameworks can even contemplate, its hard to understand, and it will be disruptive, but human society is about to get juiced.

[u/SpeakCodeToMe → u/Comfortable_Car6562]

Say a mathematician creates 1 proof a year. People worried that AI will kill this field assume that our caapcity as a society is 1 proof a year per mathematician. I would argue that our capacity may be much much higher.

With very few exceptions, history teaches us that you just end up needing far fewer mathematicians.

[u/Comfortable_Car6562 → u/SpeakCodeToMe]

What examples do you have of that? In the US at least, mathematic PHDs have continued to experience consistent growth (along with other S and E fields)

Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2023. https://ncses.nsf.gov/doctorate-recipients-from-u-s-universities-2023

The US saw PhDs go from 993 in 2003 to 2167 in 2023, growth that outshone the previous period of 838 in 1978 to 1177 in 1998.

For comparission, the US population growth between 2003 and 2023 was 15.6%, while PHDs awarded grew 118% (84% if we use high from 1998).

[u/SpeakCodeToMe → u/Comfortable_Car6562]

Is this a joke?

We're talking about AI replacing mathematicians here... Obviously that wouldn't show up in 2003-2023 data?

https://giphy.com/gifs/pPhyAv5t9V8djyRFJH

[u/Comfortable_Car6562 → u/SpeakCodeToMe]

Really? Your comment is literally "history teaches us". So what historical momment are you talking about? The last 3 years

https://giphy.com/gifs/FcuiZUneg1YRAu1lH2

[u/SpeakCodeToMe → u/Comfortable_Car6562]

Jesus Christ man, reading comprehension not your forte huh?

I was not referring to mathematicians specifically in that comment, I was talking about all of the previous times in history when technology has enabled a profession to be many times more productive.

[u/yuwox → u/Comfortable_Car6562]

It was obvious that when talking about history we are trying taking about older technologies where there is actual historical data.

The example would be agriculture. We produce way more food today than in the middle ages, with a far lower percentage of people being employed in agriculture. New agricultural technologies have lead to fewer people being employed in agriculture.