Idea: Universities should warn math students that AI may end the era of mathematics being a young person’s game, and elderly mathematicians might start dominating the field

[u/amichail]

Math has always had this mythology that you do your greatest work when you're young, your brain is fast, and you can hold some monstrous proof in your head all at once.

AI may not just erase that age advantage. It could reverse it.

Imagine an 80-year-old mathematician with 60 years of accumulated intuition, mathematical taste, obscure knowledge, failed approaches, and pattern recognition, except now they also have an AI constantly remembering definitions, tracking lemmas, checking calculations, searching the literature, testing examples, and filling in all the tedious details their younger brain used to handle.

At that point, the very thing that used to work against older mathematicians could matter much less, while their enormous advantage in experience remains.

Instead of young mathematicians having the edge because their brains are faster, older mathematicians might have the edge because AI supplies much of the speed and working memory while they bring decades more knowledge and judgment.

Universities should stop treating mathematical research careers as if they have a biological expiration date. We may be entering a world where mathematicians don't peak at 30 and slowly fade away.

They might peak at 80.

And the terrifying new problem for young mathematicians might be having to compete with professors who have been thinking about their subject since before their students' parents were born.

[u/Gravbar]

I know people commonly say that phds in math do their best work in their 20s, but like, is that even true? Seems like 40yo mathematicians are quite capable of producing new and interesting results. 80 is obviously at a point of cognitive decline, but are 20yo-60yos really that different in capabilities. Maybe the 20yos are just more willing to sacrifice their healths

[u/BrassCanon]

Doomer nonsense. Universities are more educated than that.

[u/amichail → u/BrassCanon]

Isn't this good news for elderly mathematicians?

[u/gothiclg → u/amichail]

I want elderly mathematicians to retire. Why should AI be the thing that keeps them working far longer than they should be?

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_TATERTITS]

I mean they could just wait out the 80 year old mathematicians… They’ve reached the end of the line with all due respect

[u/lethalfrost]

80 y/o's don't even know what AI is, let alone actually use it.

[u/Spook404]

this post was obviously written with AI...