[beyonddream]

I am glad to see this today - after reading Tim gower's recent post on chatgpt 5.5 pro's phd level research ability I was feeling slightly sad about the future of math research.

Interestingly enough, the moment I saw the title I thought of Bill Thurston's famous article "On proof and progress in mathematics" and the top comment on the OP's thread is from him! Reading his reply sort of gave me the antidote to the temporary blues I felt yesterday.

[fasterik]

Why did it make you sad? I can see why it would make training researchers harder, but once someone attains a postdoc-level skill in mathematics research, wouldn't having a PhD-level AI assistant just boost one's ability to do more ambitious research?

[beyonddream]

You should read that essay! The model is capable of producing phd level research on it's own with minimal set of prompt's. I was sad because of this paragraph:

"That view is that there is still a great deal of value in struggling with a mathematics problem, but that the era where you could enjoy the thrill of having your name forever associated with a particular theorem or definition may well be close to its end. So if your aim in doing mathematics is to achieve some kind of immortality, so to speak, then you should understand that that won’t necessarily be possible for much longer — not just for you, but for anybody."

He may seem to imply the end is only for some subset of reasons but if you read the entire essay he is just trying to give hope where the rest of the essay is really damning!

[Koshkin]

> once someone attains a postdoc-level...

... they will discover that level is already crowded by LLMs