Ego is insulted, they're raging but it changes nothing. Math is beautiful exactly because it discerns right from wrong with 100% accuracy, while all the emotions and "flexible interpretations" are redirected to /dev/null.
From the outside it seems like these mathematicians are saying “you shouldn’t use ai to solve our most difficult problems because they have no practical value”.
Seems ok by me, let’s point all the gpu clusters at things that actually matter and let the math folks math.
Quite appalling to open a "journalistic" report by ridiculising the people you report on:
> Not since Socrates complained that the written word might make people lazy about remembering things has there been such an outpouring of angst against a new technology in the world of academia.
It's also sort of a misleading gloss of what is going on in that dialogue, which, it is important to note _is in a book_ -- one of many that Plato wrote. Plato has Socrates recount a story (supposedly) from ancient Egypt in which an Egyptian god claims that books will make people forgetful. He never makes that claim himself, as a character, and certainly Plato didn't believe it, because he wrote lots of books before and after that dialogue. The general thrust of that section of the dialogue is that writing can be a useful tool for remembering, but _not_ sufficient for learning, which requires person to person interaction and dialogue.
Watching people who have built their entire identity around being untouchably smart suddenly be confronted with the future that children will be able to solve the equivalent of millenium prize level math in an afternoon for 5$ is enjoyable.
Seems ok by me, let’s point all the gpu clusters at things that actually matter and let the math folks math.
Classic
> Not since Socrates complained that the written word might make people lazy about remembering things has there been such an outpouring of angst against a new technology in the world of academia.
There is nothing wrong with the desire to be smart, actually succeeding at being smart, and then expecting some recognition for that achievement.