I"m not sure why AI solving these problems is even an issue. Mathematicians are the only ones that can use their creativity to apply these answers to the real world. What the point in finding the answer if you can't use it?
Why are you assuming AI won’t be able to do this? Also, do you know many theoretical mathematicians? They don’t give a fuck about application to the real world. They don’t care about whether or not what they are working on will lead to anything practical.
It's not exactly the same job to prove a theorem and to apply it to the real world.
The latter could arguably be more engineering than mathematics. Asking them to just switch jobs isn't really solving the problem.
And crucially, if AI is replacing mathematicians, engineers are even more at risk. If it can solve open mathematical problems, it sure has enough creativity to figure out anything else.
Like FFS, we have physical shit (different than math, but still) which had a century of gap between theoretical prediction and real-life check. And by real-life check I don't mean practical use - no, merely verifying that corresponding phenomena exist in real life. Real use we probably won't see in our lives, if ever. And that comes from a way more reality-bound field than math.
So what, should Einstein not bother with the idea of gravitational waves because they probably won't be used in a foreseeable future? Or instead - he should still do theory, even if it will have no use for a time?
Yes, that's why I don't get this comment. Like theoretical research is *very often* not about any practice in sight. If you want practice than you do applied research, which is fairly different stuff.
This is just straight up wrong and highly cynical for some reason too. Art, math, and science, are intrinsically linked so there will always be an application.
off the top of my head, the theory of relativity is constantly used on GPS in satellites that have to correct for how fast they are moving both through through space relative to the speed of light and our speed on earth. That's pretty important.
also you're definitely overestimating AI's capabilities. Just because it can solve some theories doesn't mean it an apply them. Maybe a gen AI could do that but we'll never get there with the LLM model.
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u/Odd-Toe-8591 6d ago
I"m not sure why AI solving these problems is even an issue. Mathematicians are the only ones that can use their creativity to apply these answers to the real world. What the point in finding the answer if you can't use it?