A misalignment of AI in mathematics

It sounds similar to the more thoughtful critiques of AI in programming. Treating AI as a lines of code (LOC) generator, where actual human beings end up not engaging with the domain the software is working in, and there is then little to no understanding or care to understand the resulting code, we call "slop." The term slop is definitely pejorative, but since most software is commercial, it ends up raising questions as to how much quality and domain knowledge matter if the goal is primarily marketplace success. Then we get those thorny questions of what is software for, anyway -- do we really accept the premise that "marketplace success" is the best, and perhaps only relevant, criteria?

The declaration here, as I understand it, is taking the premise that the point of mathematics _is_ the domain knowledge, and that using "solves math problems" as a benchmark is exactly the kind of shallow, domain-eroding approach to AI that in software we label "slop."

Mathematics is not owned by "the mathematics community" and they can't gatekeep who can do math. End of story.

cc my comment from reddit :

This is true of almost any field - if we have black-box technology that only the AI can understand / fix / augment / extend, then we will lose the ability for humans to learn and understand that tech.

Its similar to outsourcing manufacturing, you lose the ability to manufacture. If you don't exercise a muscle, it atrophies. If some people dont learn to write code [ or do math or write music or books ] the hard slow way, we will lose that deep skill.

If young people don't grapple with hard problems in science, math, economics, creative writing, drawing, music making .. they will not be trained, their cognitive skills will not develop with use. We will have no doctors or engineers or musicians or lawyers in a decade or two.

We don't want to become a race of fatties who never exercise, or dummies who just scroll social media feeds without exercising their minds.

This is real.

"I am the Lorax," he said, with a shout. "I'm the Lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please!"

Amazing. Comment upon comment, thread upon thread, failing to engage with the substance of the Field medalists' letter and instead going off on tangents about the privileges that mathematicians will lose and how they're bitter about it. There is a shocking inferiority complex on this site towards mathematicians and yet users always seem to think of themselves as smart nerds, all about science and reason and maths and whatever.

I've been disappointed by this community before but this is the first place that there is such unanimous rejection of the very ideals the uses here will claim to represent. The reaction is just... small, tiny, petty.