How AI Strips Joy and Meaning from Mathematics and Life
I've been reading about the OpenAI mathematics debacle a lot recently.
I want to dismiss it all as being pure marketing, hoping that in 3-6 months we'll look back at this and find that a lot of the solutions just don't work.
Whether the results are real or not—it is revealing how OpenAI has engaged with the field.
They picked problems with the most prestigious awards attached to them, set up a prompt, let the models loose on them. Once a bundle of proofs were churned out they dumped the solutions (and short sloppy write ups) on the mathematics community.
No one is surprised.
Thoughtful work done by caring mathematicians who lay out their thesis, state whose prior work they relied upon to create their proof, and then guide their community through their the steps they took to solve the problem to leave a trail for the future to follow is the exact kind of work they despise.
OpenAI hates the journey. They only care about the destination.
They see the journey as needless friction to be avoided, even as they slide into a hell of their own making.
But mathematics is not a field that craves answers that exist only in a void.
A proof or a counterexample has utility on its own, but that utility is limited in scope when it exists outside of the context field itself.
Imagine if we could teleport between cities, but had no maps to navigate between those cities. Being able to get from city to city is great, but you're missing so much that is important that lives between the two points.
Let me illustrate what I mean.
I was once sent a YouTube video which was meant to be the best action scene in a movie that I hadn't been sent before. And honestly?
I didn't see what the fuss was about.
You may have experienced this yourself, where when you are shown something by a friend who deeply cares about something and you just don't see anything special in it. Whatever they see in it simply isn't there for you.
Some time later, I saw the full movie.
Suddenly the action scene suddenly lived up to its promise. What changed? It certainly wasn't the movie, set in digital celluloid, unchanging and complete.
It was me. I changed.
I went on a journey with the characters and I learned to care about them. When I saw the action scene again, every strike mattered now.
There are a lot of reasons to not use AI.
But for me, one of the most core reasons to not use AI is because it strips us of the very thing that makes us human.
It is the the unintentional detours as something catches our eye, the unexpected meetings with people that you could never anticipate meeting, the mistakes that teach valuable lessons, and the successes that you surprise yourself with that make up the most meaningful fabric of our lives.
We must make eventful journeys in order to have meaningful destinations.
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