"Our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us"
twitter.comhttps://xcancel.com/wtgowers/status/1984340182351634571
"I crossed an interesting threshold yesterday, which I think many other mathematicians have been crossing recently as well. In the middle of trying to prove a result, I identified a statement that looked true and that would, if true, be useful to me.
"Instead of trying to prove it, I asked GPT5 about it, and in about 20 seconds received a proof. The proof relied on a lemma that I had not heard of (the statement was a bit outside my main areas), so although I am confident I'd have got there in the end.
"the time it would have taken me would probably have been of order of magnitude an hour (an estimate that comes with quite wide error bars). So it looks as though we have entered the brief but enjoyable era where our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us.
"PS In case anyone's worried that it used a lemma I hadn't heard of, I checked that the lemma was not a hallucination."
For some reason this sort of thing bothers a lot of people. I think it’s great that we have a new tool in the toolbelt.
Gowers wrote about AI in the late 90's. He predicted a short golden age where mathematicians would still be useful to the AI. We are in that golden age now, apparently. The AI will soon eclipse all humans in mathematics and the art form of mathematics will cease in its present form.
Could you elaborate on your last sentence please?
Go read Gowers' essay.
Form your own independent thoughts
> we have entered the brief but enjoyable era where our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us
Well that's comforting.