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Comment by gradus_ad | Hacker News Reader

But it's entirely up to humans whether or not higher mathematical thought ceases due to lazy over reliance on AI.

Just because AI is capable of churning out vomit inducing prose, doesn't mean we need to surrender to a future filled with it. Humans who actually care about what they're doing will use AI when and where it should be used. I trust the intelligence, curiosity and tenacity of mathematicians to learn to work with AI. I don't understand the sky is falling worst case scenario Tao and others seem to be taking as the most likely future.

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> it's entirely up to humans to allow higher mathematical thought to stop happening

…yes. That’s why the human mathematicians are having this debate. How to keep the human mathematicians and their founders motivated to keep doing math, potentially more productively with these new tools.

Again I analogize to the situation with developers. There are glass half empty devs who seem to enjoy writing boilerplate and hate AI, and glass half full devs who realize AI when properly used enables an order of magnitude increase in productivity.

If AI saps motivation from some mathematicians, I question where their motivation came from in the first place. Maybe they're just too wedded to the traditional way of doing things and aren't fully appreciating the actual productivity gains AI makes possible.

> glass half full devs who realize AI when properly used enables an order of magnitude increase in productivity

Again, have you read Tao’s recent criticism of AI in mathematics? Nothing you’re saying is disputed.

> If AI saps motivation from some mathematicians, I question where their motivation came from in the first place

Question away. I care about results. If a substantial number of great mathematicians say this is a problem, and a substantial number of students agree, whether they’re unappreciative of their potentially pending unemployment is irrelevant to both that fact and the fact that they’re not going to be producing mathematics. (Again, here. The American mathematical ecosystem collapsing doesn’t mean the same will happen abroad.)

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