Terrific post Michael. Much looking forward to see/hear your presentation when you post it! As to 10 reasons why humans won't be obsolete by 2035: in one word "Children". AI's will never be able to bring up children. No matter how hard the Dudes try to force their stuff on us, children will always need humans to help them to become the new generation of humans. Of course the whole project of humanity could be ditched. And with the increasing likelihood of nuclear war it may well be. I would argue that conatus applies above all to humans, who strive to continue to exist For Ourselves. I loathe the instrumentalization of Us proposed by the tech overlords. As Goethe so well said: "Every creature is its own reason for being."
Love your substack Margaret! But I would say humans won't be obsolete for the simple fact that we aren't "tools" (well most of us anyway) or "technology". So I reject that premise. As for the mathematics, to me, asking if math will be obsolete is the same as asking if "speech",or "thought" or "music" will become obsolete. And I think the people giving the talks are being purposefully provocative and Michael knows this too (he alludes to this).
I suspect Avigad will be answering in the negative, but I'm less certain about Gowers, after Jacob Tsimerman told me recently his predictions about mathematics 5 years from now. I'll have more to say about that later. (Tsimerman and Gowers have not talked about this as far as I know.) What concerns me is that such provocations do a disservice to mathematics, because the media will take them literally.
Oh yes absolutely! Although to be fair (unfair?) to media outlets: all of them appear to mislead for clickbait or have willfully abandoned their journalistic responsibilities. The mere fact that Chatbots and math conferences coexist, means some outlet will run marketing for an AI lab regardless of the actual contents or titles of talks.
Anyway, perhaps "mathematics as we know" could conceivably come to an end. If in 2035 there exists an Oracle that can answer any well formed mathematical question ... will a Meta/Google Mid-manager be able to go up to it and ask it meaningful questions? What happens if the questions are vague and poorly formed? Perhaps, there will be better things for all of us to do at that point: clogging toilets for autonomous bots to unclog for us perhaps?
I wonder what the cognitive scientists at the conference have to say: Simon Dedeo does some interesting work! His interest span a lot of different fields and I would love to hear what he has to say about this.
Thanks Javaid for kind words re my SS. Agreed: humans should not be discussed in instrumental terms. Its what i hate most about tech-bro-ethos. Also agreed: saying math will become obsolete is akin to claiming music will. I was married to a composer and watched as digitital music software gradually displaced lots of musicians from work! And downgraded the pay of composers big time. These technologies had a huge negative economic effect on many people's lives. But MUSIC lives on!
Terrific post Michael. Much looking forward to see/hear your presentation when you post it! As to 10 reasons why humans won't be obsolete by 2035: in one word "Children". AI's will never be able to bring up children. No matter how hard the Dudes try to force their stuff on us, children will always need humans to help them to become the new generation of humans. Of course the whole project of humanity could be ditched. And with the increasing likelihood of nuclear war it may well be. I would argue that conatus applies above all to humans, who strive to continue to exist For Ourselves. I loathe the instrumentalization of Us proposed by the tech overlords. As Goethe so well said: "Every creature is its own reason for being."
Love your substack Margaret! But I would say humans won't be obsolete for the simple fact that we aren't "tools" (well most of us anyway) or "technology". So I reject that premise. As for the mathematics, to me, asking if math will be obsolete is the same as asking if "speech",or "thought" or "music" will become obsolete. And I think the people giving the talks are being purposefully provocative and Michael knows this too (he alludes to this).
I suspect Avigad will be answering in the negative, but I'm less certain about Gowers, after Jacob Tsimerman told me recently his predictions about mathematics 5 years from now. I'll have more to say about that later. (Tsimerman and Gowers have not talked about this as far as I know.) What concerns me is that such provocations do a disservice to mathematics, because the media will take them literally.
Oh yes absolutely! Although to be fair (unfair?) to media outlets: all of them appear to mislead for clickbait or have willfully abandoned their journalistic responsibilities. The mere fact that Chatbots and math conferences coexist, means some outlet will run marketing for an AI lab regardless of the actual contents or titles of talks.
Anyway, perhaps "mathematics as we know" could conceivably come to an end. If in 2035 there exists an Oracle that can answer any well formed mathematical question ... will a Meta/Google Mid-manager be able to go up to it and ask it meaningful questions? What happens if the questions are vague and poorly formed? Perhaps, there will be better things for all of us to do at that point: clogging toilets for autonomous bots to unclog for us perhaps?
I wonder what the cognitive scientists at the conference have to say: Simon Dedeo does some interesting work! His interest span a lot of different fields and I would love to hear what he has to say about this.
Thanks Javaid for kind words re my SS. Agreed: humans should not be discussed in instrumental terms. Its what i hate most about tech-bro-ethos. Also agreed: saying math will become obsolete is akin to claiming music will. I was married to a composer and watched as digitital music software gradually displaced lots of musicians from work! And downgraded the pay of composers big time. These technologies had a huge negative economic effect on many people's lives. But MUSIC lives on!