The big AI/math news is the release today of the Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. It’s an excellent attempt to identify the new threats to the intellectual culture of the mathematics community and begin a discussion of what to do about them. For some discussion, see Siobhan Roberts at the New York Times, and Michael Harris at his substack. There are some endorsements from prominent mathematicians included. From Peter Scholze there’s
This is a wonderful declaration, coming at the right time. The goal of mathematical research is human understanding of mathematics, and so mathematics can only thrive in a community of human mathematicians. It is crucial to preserve this communal spirit. In my experience, mathematical ideas, like children, must be nurtured and grow over the years. Just like I do not want my children to be educated by AI, I am pondering my mathematical ideas without use of AI, and generally avoid reading AI-generated text as best as I can.
and from Kevin Buzzard there’s
Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work. The Leiden Declaration is a well-thought-through response to what is currently happening, as AI continues to disrupt this space.
The topic of the capabilities of current and future AI agents is something I’m not very well-informed about, but recently I’ve, like Buzzard, been struck by the way in which obscure mathematical work of little if any practical value has been the subject of a massive publicity campaign. Why do most of the people I meet seem to want to talk about how AI has solved some Erdos problems?
Reading the newspaper financial pages I think provides the answer to this. In today’s New York Times or Wall Street Journal, you can read about the upcoming trillion-dollar IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars are riding on the relative perception of the technologies of these two companies, something that goes a long way toward explaining why they are throwing massive resources at proving Erdos conjectures and publicizing their successes.
Part of this story is the hiring of prominent mathematicians and physicists to work for very large salaries (and a piece of the trillion-dollar IPO payout). The huge US economic inequality disaster is about to get a lot worse and it makes sense that those with the opportunity to do so would sign up to be on the winning side with the new class of oligarchs. Like most things these days, I’m not sure what’s true and what’s not, but there’s reporting yesterday that Harvard string theory Xi Yin has joined OpenAI. Stringkin42069 is now back, with some pungent commentary on the situation.
String theory and its role in the destruction of a crucial part of our scientific culture is now a story not about the future but about the past. In its post-scientific phase, you can now read about String Theory for Metaphysicians, which is basically a rehashing of the highlights of decades of hype, carefully ignoring the existence of any critique of the hype.
Here at Columbia it’s a beautiful day, and once you get through Checkpoint Charlie, the campus is as attractive as ever. The army of security guards has done an excellent job of keeping us “safe”, which basically means no publicly visible criticism of the state of Israel and the genocide in Gaza. The US/Israeli wars and threats to end Iranian civilization with massive bombardment have drawn attention away from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Looking back, the Columbia students with their encampment were very much right about what was going on. You can read more about the current situation in Gaza here or here. Netanyahu’s announced intention to kill enough Palestinians to get them out of 70% of Gaza (with 100% for later) has received little attention.
Part of the end of our civilization is that we now live in a post-truth environment, with a Fascist dictatorship in power and oligarchs doing their best to exploit this to their own ends. Finding out what is really happening in Gaza or elsewhere is not easily done. In the Israeli genocide story, one thing that has clarified things for me is listening to people I know well like Scott Aaronson, who with his characteristic clarity of thought explains the logic of why Palestinians and their children must be killed (they want to kill his family). It’s all too clear here that what’s going on is a descent from civilization into tribalism, with Scott’s latest explaining that he will cut off all ties with one of the few relatively reliable sources of information around (the New York Times), because it is telling him things he doesn’t want to hear.
To try and end on a more positive note, I recently found out that Edward Witten is on bluesky, with posts like this that provide some counterpoint to the Scotts of the world. Once you get out of Columbia’s gates, you’re in the city of New York, which now has a wonderfully talented and sensible mayor, who refused to joint Israeli officials like Bezalel Smotrich as they marched through Manhattan on Sunday. His statement was:
You can see in the participation of the far-right Israeli Minister Smotrich, as well as a number of other ministers, a vision of annihilation, a complicity in genocide and frankly, a belief that does not have much value for even the sanctity of children in Gaza… And I am offended, as I know many New Yorkers are, by their participation.
Maybe there’s still hope…
