Mathematics may shift to more closely resemble the humanities because of AI

Perhaps mathematicians will spend most of their time trying to understand the proofs the AI system generates. Mark Kisin, a mathematician at Harvard University, foresees the field shifting to more closely resemble the humanities. “If you look at a typical English department at a university, it’s not usually staffed by people who write literature,” he said. “It’s staffed by people who critique literature.” Similarly, he said, mathematicians might assume the role of critics who closely analyze AI proofs and then teach them in seminars. Ronen Eldan, a mathematician who recently left the Weizmann Institute of Science for OpenAI, recalls a conversation in which another mathematician predicted that “mathematicians will be like pianists today,” he said. “They don’t play their own compositions, but people still come to hear them.” It will in some sense be the end of research mathematics as it’s currently practiced,” Daniel Litt of the University of Toronto said. “But that doesn’t mean it will be the end of mathematicians.” - Jordana Cepelewicz writing in Quanta Magazine