ACC Seminar: What Is a Mathematician For? Rethinking Our Craft in the Age of AI
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Location: North Building Room 316 and Zoom (Passcode: ACC)
Speaker: Alexei Miasnikov, Stevens Institute of Technology
ABSTRACT
Mathematics is at a crossroads. AI is here, and there is a lot of uncertainty around it. I think this crisis is on the scale of the collapse of naïve set theory after the discovery of the paradoxes, or of Turing’s discovery of undecidable problems. Maybe it is even more dramatic, since it affects each one of us personally, and the change is so fast that we have no time to adjust.
I will give my own optimistic view of the current situation and of what we need to do now, as individual mathematicians and as a community. Drawing on my own experience, I will focus on three topics:
1. Proving theorems in the new era. What interesting things can mathematicians still prove, and how, whether or not we compete with AI?
2. From proving to leading and understanding. If machines can increasingly produce and check proofs, our real value lies in two things:
Shaping a vision: deciding what is worth proving and why.
Interpreting proofs: finding the mathematical constructions behind AI-generated proofs.
3. Reshaping training and community. What should we teach students when computation, literature search and routine proofs are automated? The community also has to settle the rules on credit, authorship and disclosure of AI use, so that mathematics stays a shared human enterprise and not just an output stream.
BIOGRAPHY
Alexei Miasnikov is Professor of Mathematics at Stevens. His research interests include geometric and algorithmic group theory, model theory, computer science, and cryptography. Among Alexei's many honors are an invited address to the International Congress of Mathematicians (2014), and the Malcev Prize from the Russian Academy of Sciences for lifetime achievement (2016). In addition, he is an Inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellow Award, a Marsden Fund Award, and a Russian Federation Award.
Attendance: This is a technical talk open to all.
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