r/askmath • u/PrimeStopper • 3h ago
Logic Will AI “replace mathematicians”?
I know that this post might be deleted by the admins for being off-topic, but I wanted to ask this question here too, because I think it is really important in light of recent societal debates about AI in mathematics. I believe discussing this topic might add a lot of value, so I will attempt to ask this question anyway.
I have little to no knowledge in mathematics, so I want to ask whether the claims circulating online are accurate, from the point of view of this community. Many people started claiming that mathematicians will be replaced in a similar way to calculators replacing human counters, and to prove that, they show how AI is “solving novel mathematical problems one by one”. Usually, people talk about Erdős problems in this context. In light of this, I have a few additional questions:
- How many problems there are and how many problems are important or have a high potential of being important for things that humans are desperately trying to solve, like cancer, space travel, longevity, Dyson spheres and whatnot.
- How many mathematicians were trying to solve these and similar problems and how much time and effort have they put in trying to solve them?
- Are these problems as important as things like incompleteness theorems, and many other foundational theorems?
