> Every single knowledge worker is going to face this kind of crisis. It will be worse for people who cared deeply about their craft, but the crisis will have the same shape.
Normally I'm very sympathetic to the plights of those socially affected by AI, and rarely pass up the opportunity to clown on institutional actors papering over these plights with glib cliches. But in this case, I really feel like this is a case of monkey-brain overriding mathematician-brain.
The greatest accomplishment in my life is my math PhD, earned before AI got useful. I do math-heavy work for my day job, and I care deeply about every craft I practice, to the point that I am almost certainly on the unhealthier end of the spectrum of perfectionism. Yet I both acknowledge rather than deny the impending death of mathematics as we have engaged it for the last couple centuries, and am far more excited than aghast.
I would have to write a whole essay in order to communicate this in a way that is appropriately sensitive, but in a nutshell: We have always been in the business of discovering and understanding math, have we not? Are we going to call it a tragedy rather than a blessing now that the floodgates on both are bursting, just because it makes us feel less special, unique, valuable? It's such a self-serving aesthetic on the beauty of math to me. The author claims there is something profound and spiritual about math, and I agree; it exists prior to and above all of us, human or AI. Whatever way we can tap that beauty is incredible, full stop. This is what I believe.
From the article:
> These developments have triggered some deranged thoughts in me. I have wondered if it is the express goal of these companies to make me kill myself. Am I alone in this paranoia?
The severity of this line caught me off guard. I think the author is genuinely having an emotional-social crisis, and I feel terrible for them, but at this moment they may be having a hard time separating their trauma from their intellectual aesthetic for what math is all about.