Late request for suggestions
Meeting in a few hours!!
In February I was invited to join the American Mathematical Society Advisory Group on Artificial Intelligence and the Mathematical Community. My first meeting with the group will take place at 2 PM Eastern Time.
The group was convened a few years ago and has produced a series of white papers:
• Committee on the Profession: “Questions artificial intelligence raises for the mathematics profession, (PDF)” a broad discussion of how AI might affect our profession.
• Committee on Education: “Artificial intelligence: Challenges and opportunities in postsecondary mathematics education, (PDF)” discussing what we should think about as educators – ethical concerns, new opportunities, and curriculum development.
• Committee on Publications: “Artificial intelligence: Publishing in mathematics, (PDF)” which considers implications of AI for peer review, research integrity, copyright, and publications.
• Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: “Equity, diversity, inclusion, and artificial intelligence: Issues for mathematicians to consider, (PDF)” discusses research opportunities around fairness and equity, as well as ethical questions around training data and large language models.
• Committee on Science Policy: “Harnessing the power of science policy with mathematics” – how AI and mathematics can enrich one another, and how to enable interested mathematicians to get involved.
Links to these papers are at this page, which describes the work of the Advisory Group and concludes with these words:
The AMS AI Advisory Group strongly encourages all mathematicians to seriously consider the potential impact of AI on their own work, and to participate in a broad community discussion about this impact.
My understanding is that the Advisory Group has yet to devise a model for this “broad community discussion.” In the meantime — over the next four hours — this newsletter is open to your suggestions. If you have time, please read the white papers and let me know if you think important questions have been overlooked, or if you have anything to say relevant to the Advisory Group’s mission. I will bring your suggestions to the meeting.
I should have done this two months ago, and will be sure to renew this request well in advance of the next meeting.
So random lurker #3 here. I am of the "somewhat mathematically inclined weirdo/idiot" demographic and spend abnormally large amounts of time trying to teach myself math . Basically all the mathematics I missed at school and was afraid an elderly Soviet Professor would teach me...
Mathematics education in public schools tends to be poorly motivated apart for being utilitarian and ruthless "filtering mechanism" for children that are otherwise cast aside as "future manual laborers". This seems like it is pervasive across many modern cultures.
I sometimes find myself wondering what the point of me learning mathematics is ... how do I justify to other people that what I do is worthwhile and interesting? Why is mathematics important? Is mathematics more like an art? In the "Age of AI" is math more like art and music: a set of digital artifacts that can just be generated on demand and thus lose their meaning? Is math a social and cultural activity?
Also, do the people at google actually understand what math is for? It seems like a lot of the engineering brained people at Google (and I went to school with a lot of those kids) mostly look at life as a increasingly difficult set of tests/prompts to pass. When they want to "automate mathematics to benefit humanity" how exactly what they are doing benefiting humanity? Perhaps these people have some mistaken belief -from their schooling no doubt- that "math equals intelligence"?
That I even have to ask these questions betrays my privilege and maybe "material concerns" of the average worker would increase if there was an "abundance" of math ... but we will instead get a paucity of meaning with no abundance of anything material.
Michael: I read through once through the five documents. If I had more time, I would read them more carefully a second time and have more substantial suggestions. So, this is a very brief suggestion: I propose that there should be a clear distinction between two aspects/levels re: AI and mathematics. (1) The mutual impact (the impact is in both directions) between AI and the practice of mathematicians, and (2) the responsibility of mathematicians as an academic community vis-a-vis ominous implications (e.g. some are threatening to the human species) of AI's increasing penetration in the conduct of public institutions (e.g. some government's increased surveillance of citizens).