An intelligent, humane critique from some mathematicians.
The most precious resources of our profession are students and ideas, and these we nurture with great care. We feel responsible to let them grow to their full potential, until they can live a life of their own in the mathematical world. For students we often suggest problems with the core intention of developing skills making them well-positioned for advances in research and elsewhere… These processes invariably take time and are based on human interaction.
As a Japanese proverb says, ‘the journey is the destination’.
The task of a scientist or a writer or any kind of maker, really, is to think. And it is in the thinking that the real work takes place. The importance of the work lies precisely in the fact that the creators do not take shortcuts.
But the issue with AI is that it is all shortcut.
We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose.