Selfishly, as someone who enjoys programming, I feel the same way about the journey. But let's face it: for everyone else, the outcome is what actually matters. Mathematicians argue that their journey may lead to novel insights, but are those insights really valuable? Are they going to help the LLMs solve more problems? And are we sure that the LLMs can't deliver those same insights?
I don't know if you have kids or not but I have two kids in high school and keeping them motivated through the AI revolution is a serious challenge and some of their classmates have already all but given up. The next generation down the line is going to grow up with the same kind of attitude towards thinking that you might have towards the skill of map reading. And I think we'll all be poorer because of that, not richer.
Mathematicians could:
- Continue working on philosophical aspects of the solution and not bothered by whether the solution is known or not. It is not a movie that gets spoiled when the ending is known.
- Or better, demand from AI labs, how they would like to see AI helping them on philosophical aspects.
…except the machine will be better at these aspects too :D
I find it funny when people suggest "just re-orient from knowledge work X to knowledge work Y, doh!". Not realizing all knowledge work is on the chopping blocks.