“What do you do if you then obliterate an entire generation of postdocs and PhD students because you solve their problems?”
The Vergecast · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Hart said mathematicians told him of colleagues whose research programs had blown up overnight after a single drop of AI-solved problems. His question is whether the profession survives long enough to start valuing the work beyond the final result.
Transcript
…they want, they need the mathematicians. And I think if they're, I don't think they're even asking by dropping it on them, they're demanding or presuming, even worse. I don't think it's then unreasonable to say, could you at least, even if it's not playing fair, not playing what feels underhanded.
…way that that stuff can work can be applied to all of these other industries. There's something here that feels like it could work. And I spend a lot of time vacillating between optimistic that we will get there and completely nihilist about it. What do you hear from the mathematicians right now?
…survive that long, long enough, given the speed of this, to do that? Or does it change its value system in crediting more than just the end result in time to recognize the value of people doing all that other stuff? And that's, I think, the question here is that because it's happening so quickly and it's being done with seemingly such little care, that those systems in place, like, well, what do you do if you then obliterate an entire generation of postdocs and PhD students because you solve their problems? Yeah. What happens after that? Like, there's then both a need for them and an absence of trained mathematicians. But some people, I suppose, were also very excited about what all this shows. And in saying that, well, one is that a lot of what's happened isn't necessarily that creative opening up new area kind of stuff. So there's either excitement that maybe AI could do that, or that still…
you at like two o'clock in the morning just getting a text that's like 8,000 words of equation that is just completely unreadable. And they're like, look what I've. Discovered it. You're like, this means nothing.
I mean, with the time difference as well, that is about the time it would come through. And I also didn't know some notation could go via text, but it can. And it's fascinating though. And so it's hugely accelerating research. People are already. I was texting a few people today ahead of recording…
Yeah.
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