AI won't kill math research — it will select for Hardy-style expositors, argue mathematicians
nitarshan · x · 2026-10-12
A debate on AI's impact on mathematics: one view holds that if mathematicians' job becomes merely interpreting AI results, the field becomes soul-crushingly boring and could collapse within a generation.
A rebuttal invokes G. H. Hardy: per C. P. Snow's foreword to A Mathematician's Apology, Hardy's most substantive contributions came from explaining and rigorously communicating the brilliant but inexplicable work of Littlewood and Ramanujan. AI, the argument goes, will simply select for this Hardy-type mathematician — a master of exposition rather than raw invention, ironically a skill Hardy himself disparaged.
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