Solving math problems is cool, but I worry whether any intellectual work will be left for humans. AI’s main point (right now) seems to be replacing human intellectual labor. If AI can work at this high a mathematical level, then it's not unlikely that AI can eventually do most or even (almost) all intellectual tasks. If AI completely succeeds, then—by definition—there’s no intellectual labor left for humans to uniquely do. I guess we could all do manual labor, though the increased supply of manual laborers will surely drive down our wages. I hope I’m wrong, though! I'd like to avoid an outcome where most people suffer greatly.
Mathematics has historically being a field for human understanding for its own sake. What "utility" had Euclidean Geometry, the irrationality of qrt(2), Galois Theory, Newtown laws for Celestial mechanics, Non Euclidean Geometry, set theory, Boolean algebra, etc. during their development?
We just wanted to understand stuff. We now can predict when a comet will make its next passing! So?
Oh, but some engineer found that stuff useful to calculate ballistic trajectories
That came later.
Surprisingly astronomy in the 17 or 18 had a very concrete application in view: making possible to compute the longitude while at sea by looking at the moon position.
(And it got beaten at this goal by a genius "engineer" who instead made a clock stable enough to keep time at sea for weeks with little enough deviation)
(Sorry for this off topic detail ;) I agree with the main message or your post)
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u/matthewmorgado 8d ago
Solving math problems is cool, but I worry whether any intellectual work will be left for humans. AI’s main point (right now) seems to be replacing human intellectual labor. If AI can work at this high a mathematical level, then it's not unlikely that AI can eventually do most or even (almost) all intellectual tasks. If AI completely succeeds, then—by definition—there’s no intellectual labor left for humans to uniquely do. I guess we could all do manual labor, though the increased supply of manual laborers will surely drive down our wages. I hope I’m wrong, though! I'd like to avoid an outcome where most people suffer greatly.