French Math Society president 'devastated' as AI solves a problem colleagues pondered for years
IgorCarron · x · 2026-09-09
Isabelle Gallagher, president of the French Mathematical Society, admits she was "a bit devastated" to see a beautiful question that she and many colleagues had spent years discussing at the blackboard solved by AI within days. The sharer quips: it's not a catastrophe, just the end of an illusion.
The anecdote captures AI for Math's real impact on fundamental research — long-open problems are being closed off at speed.
More from AGI Musings
- Polymarket opens book on AI labs solving Millennium Prize Problems, 69% odds by 2027 — Polymarket · 2026-09-09
- Dev cheers AI disrupting math academia: r/math bans AI threads, "scooping" claims are nonsense — ctjlewis · 2026-09-09
- Safety researcher calls for scientific scrutiny of assumptions behind p(doom) claims — sebkrier · 2026-09-09
- Interrogating the beliefs behind "10% chance everyone dies" AI doom claims — lucasmeijer · 2026-09-09
- Math Is Really About Manipulating Intuitions, Not Symbol Manipulation — mjdramstead · 2026-09-09
- AI agents change code economics: maybe nobody needs to understand all the code — Genaforvena · 2026-09-09