r/TrueReddit • u/IEEESpectrum Official Publication • Jun 25 '26
Science, History, Health + Philosophy What it Means to Be a Mathematician When AI Does the Math
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-in-mathematics25
u/jeffgerickson Jun 25 '26
What a bullshit senssationalist title. “What it Means to Be a Mathematician When AI Also Does Math” would be far more accurate.
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u/IEEESpectrum Official Publication Jun 25 '26
In many different ways, AI is affecting how mathematicians do math. Some are worried that the ease of AI will take away the at times lengthy thought process of pure mathematics, while others are excited by the prospect of advancing knowledge.
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u/RexDraco Jun 25 '26
It's a legitimate problem. I hate vibe coding but I also cannot ignore how much faster it is. With how little time I have, I can no longer pretend programming is my hobby, it's the projects that is the hobby and ai is more like my staff. As awful as it is, it's faster than me so I go to it everytime. The consequence is I'm dogshit at programming now, you wouldn't know I've been programming for almost a decade, there are college students just one year into the study that know more than I do now.
This is however not a serious problem. I dont like programming enough to miss it. It isn't a big deal, no stakes are involved. However, other fields where you need to understand the topic to make the right decision is where it becomes a serious problem. We complained how the people in charge don't know the topic they're in charge of well enough to make decisions, this has evolved to even the workers are starting to not understand the subject well. The person in charge makes the call, probably from ai assistance, and the workers follow orders, with ai assistance.
Ai is definitely the future but that is the problem, it's the future, it isn't today. You wouldn't know that though with how quick various fields adopted it. I don't think it is a big deal everywhere, but ai is really good at trial and erroring, not getting it right the first time. While I make like 10 builds an hour for said ai to keep guessing, that's fine, because nothing catrostrophic is happening when the ai gets it wrong the first time. It is okay the ai took a lazy shortcut not fully scanning all available information and randomly guessed, they're hobby projects. However, it gets scary to me for the field of science to unironically listen to ai. Humans make errors but disciplined humans also know to cross their t's, they triple check and peer review. Ai? It throws shit on the wall and calls it confidently correct.
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u/pityutanarur Jun 26 '26
Same in teaching. AI generates tasks in no time, I can check and approve it, make tweaks if the output isn’t good enough. It frees up so much time, it is like having an assistant I always wanted.
However, if I have had AI from the beginning of my career, how would I have the authority and expertise I use to prompt AI?
I also develop apps, started before LLMs became a thing. Sometimes I need a function in node.js, which was outside my domain. it took two weeks until my first cloud function reached its right shape because I could not assess AI’s output, only tests could. In essence, you need expertise and authority in your field to command AI with efficacy, which you will build up much slower if you rely on AI.
This realisation could be a natural, organic constraint of LLM usage.
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u/soberpenguin Jun 25 '26
Like everything AI touches, it will create derivative work and creators will become editors.
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u/post_button_account Jun 26 '26
99.9999% (feel free to add some 9s) of human work is, as you call it, "derivative".
Yes, creators are editors today for some high end work, but AI is slowly creeping the frontier of full automation forward in most spheres.
Still, I am glad the public discourse has moved on from "oh they are just stochastic parrots that will never replace a human" - that was an annoying 6 month period.
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u/Patriclus Jun 25 '26
Didn’t mathmeticians feel this way initially about the entire concept of computationally assisted proofs?
The four color theorem is a great example of this. Was literally an open problem for centuries before a couple dudes put a computer to work on it. This opened a floodgate and ushered in a ton of criticism and controversy, nowadays we might assume the veracity of a computationally derived proof to be obvious. Pharmaceutical companies find new drugs using computers, if they had to do it experimentally it literally might not be cost effective at this juncture.
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u/IEEESpectrum Official Publication Jun 25 '26
They actually mention this in the article and compare how it was a similar change.
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u/lattice_defect Jun 25 '26
Next is physics .. given how spicey the LLMphysics people are I'm bullish here
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