Scholar Worries AI Will End Math's Slow, Meandering Discovery Tradition
anshulkundaje · x · 2026-09-13
A researcher with a chemistry/physics/biology background responds to Steven Strogatz, admitting that even as a non-mathematician he feels overwhelmed. He is thrilled that AI opens problem-solving to millions of ordinary people, but worries it will end the deliberate, leisurely, meandering process of discovery that has been both a cherished part of mathematics for centuries and its foundation for progress.
He recalls the Scottish Cafe where Banach, Ulam, and others sat for hours scribbling equations on marble tables, and similar gatherings in Vienna, Budapest, Göttingen, and later Cambridge, Berkeley, and Los Alamos — lamenting that this tradition may be displaced by AI.
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