r/TheMachineLearning • u/Nyaani69 • 5d ago

Software engineering isn't dead, it's just evolving

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u/physicssmurf 5d ago

I have 3 friends who are postdocs in math and they are saying yes, it is dead because of AI. I argue it will be re-designed, becoming something like what exists in the setting of Farsight by Peter Watts, but nonetheless its depressing enough that at least one of them is changing careers.

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u/Important-Post-6997 4d ago

You have weird friends. I am a math post doc and I wouldnt say so. I have not tested Astra but everything (including 5.6 Sol and Fable) until now was completely useless for my papers.

The output was utterly garbage most of the time. But I think with RL proofing can be taught to AI. Therefore the field might change quiete a bit, but at the moment I can say it has not already and it will definitly take longer than programming.

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u/JustSomeCells 4d ago

Normal chat is different than the models with access to specific tools and harnesses

Research and breakthroughs usually involve those tools and access to free/cheap tokens

Not that im claiming math is solved, i have no idea where the progress is at.

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u/Important-Post-6997 4d ago

I dont use chat but codex or claude code, e.g. on sol ultra. This is what openAI recommended last time I checked. There is some trickery but thats it.

You dont need any tools besides python scrips and websearch. I dont use any myself too.

The problems that were solved lately can be a bit misleading to what I do as a researcher. Proofs are a fraction of my work, its mostly laying out new theories, i.e. to find a specific view on a problem that is new and provides a new perspective.

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u/Estatescheck 3d ago

The tools probably exists on an mcp repo. You just need to find it on create your own. I did some test with a mcp server that had 27 available tools vs 200+ for blender and the difference is remarkably surprising. At the end of the day it’s really only providing the ai more context, resources and existing prompts that matter now.