But I totally get the anxiety - it's a real John Henry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)) moment for the mathematics field. Clearly this is going to restructure how mathematicians are going to be trained and how they work.

But for many “pure” mathematicians ... machines can discover the truths we’re seeking, at the cost of robbing us of the struggle and joy of discovering them ourselves.

This sentiment is akin to wanting to curse humanity to darkness because they're not the one carrying the candle. Strogatz is not lamenting the loss of discovery, he's lamenting the loss of being heralded as a hero for the discovery.

Nothing prevents him or others discovering truths for themselves. Turn off the computer and try to re-derive it from first principles. Have at it! This is what students do in many courses anyway.

I've found little so depressing as being at the precipice of a renaissance of science and mathematical discovery, only to see how resistant the scientists and mathematicians are to it. It lays bare their counterarguments. Any pretense of wanting to discovery fundamental truth about reality is supplanted with "but what about our careers!?". Strogatz, and others like him, should be ashamed of themselves.

Lets say the frontier of some specific problem or a field in math is at x. X was reached over millenia by incremental steps and sometimes to leaps and jumps.

Now if AI gives us a x + 1 or x + 10 state, aren't there still x + infinite steps to climb? Many of this the AI can never imagine and won't reach by itself without human assist.

Yes, there is a temporary shock and awe because of all the low hanging x + 1 through x+ 1000 fruits for a given sub-domain/problem have been carpet bombed or whatever.. but isn't it turtles all the way!? Won't people soon find something more to develop and solve that takes it further than where it was of this infinite realm of exploration?

The marketing goal, if you will, had been met and IBM would continue their actual money making business of selling mainframes and doing consulting.

The same thing will happen with AI companies’ endeavors into abstract maths.

Maths however will be changed - students can no longer be taught via the same homework - and mathematicians will have to do more computer work and probably work in larger groups of people.

Someone asked him what he thought of the AI proof. Justin said he didn’t know. He hadn’t read the paper yet. He said he’d been “too busy.”

That astonished me. Too busy to look at a problem he had been dreaming about for 19 years? “I am genuinely busy and probably wouldn’t be able to get to reading a human’s proof immediately either,” he told me afterward, by email. “It does not help that AI does not write mathematics particularly well.”

Given:

* The human mathematicians can't solve the problems.

* The slop engine can't write well enough to make its purported solutions readable by human mathematicians.

* Sam Altman is a frivolous liar.

How is it possible to know whether the problems have been solved at all?

https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/20/who-will-become-the-...

We only hear from a mix of doomers and fanboys in the news.

- this will never work - it’s slop this is unusable - ok its correct, but this work is a mess - I’ve been mandated to use it. It’s cost effective - ok we need to find a way to use this output to our advantage - I can always work on my interests in my free time - well, I have to pay rent and this life wont go on forever and there are may people who hate their jobs - I am lucky to have a job - who cares anyway - it’s got electrolytes

Machines could, presumably, become good enough at hammering at solutions. But they won't be very good at finding questions. Because questions are infinite. And to a machine, all these questions are the same.

Questions are "good questions" because they are good questions *to* humans. And that's what makes human mathematicians (and scientists) so important