I'm writing this post based on Terence Tao's ICM lecture a couple of days ago. For context, I'm a 4th year PhD student working in number theory.
One of the main things he mentioned was that before AI a lot of aspects of math research went hand in hand. Solving problems was concurrent with building a community of mathematicians. With AI rapidly accelerating the problem solving aspect, we might be looking at a future where we are flooded with ai assisted proofs without a community to appreciate it.
For example, linear algebra as a field first emerged from papers and then it was adopted by the community over decades through books and courses. Even if we have a long AI generated proof that we can verify using Lean, what is the point of it if we can't be inspired from it.
I personally dread this will become another example of enshittification. For example, Silicon Valley reinventing a bus after destroying public transport. I fear the mathematical "community" will be repackaged to us in the future by these companies after the present community is slowly eradicated over the next few years. Of course this is a rather bleak outlook to what is definitely a very promising technology.
To clarify, I'm not saying AI is bad. It's a tool. But we should be very skeptical about how this tool is being pushed to us. It is in the best interest of the AI companies that we become dependent on AI to the point that we can't imagine working without it. I'm sure a neuroscientist can break this down much better than I can. I think we need an urgent re-evaluation of how AI is used and introduce courses discussing how to use it "safely", without leading to cognitive decline. It should be in collaboration with neuroscientists. A lot of people might argue "Oh, but you can always talk to other mathematicians. What's wrong with having it on the side". Perhaps I'm not an optimist, I'm afraid convenience is a slippery slope. Just look at how social media was promised to us as a global unifier (which it definitely is). Yet it has led to a decline in community to the point that "community building" is now being packaged to us as a course/skill.
At the end of the day all we have is each other. And I do believe we can come together and seriously discuss and safeguard the future of this community. Happy to hear everyone's thoughts on this.