— quoting @aryehazan — saved image
John Carney [verified] @carney I'm going to admit that I don't understand the mathematician takes on AI. It seems like they sound like they have some "problem" they've been thinking about so long that they consider it their own. And now AI has solved it, and that has triggered a psychological crisis. Not an employment crisis. No mathematician lost their job because AI solved a math mystery. It seems purely mental. The mystery they pondered is no longer mysterious! I guess I hadn't realized this was how the mathematician mind worked. And somehow "the fate of mathematicians will be the fate of all of humanity." But most of humanity has nothing like this in their lives. Lawyers? Actors? Doctors? Landscapers? I can't think of anyone who would experience a psychological crisis over AI figuring out a new thing (or answering an old question) relevant to their field. [quoted] Aryeh Kontorovich [verified] @aryehazan · 9h I saw this all coming 2 years ago, about when @GSalafatinos solved my problem using Gemini I experienced the existential crisis and wrote about it here, albeit perhaps in more emotionally muted ... [cut off] 6:36 AM · Aug 3, 2026 · 4,335 Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
X post by John Carney expressing puzzlement at mathematicians' psychological reactions to AI solving open problems, arguing it's not an employment crisis but a purely mental one, and questioning why mathematicians uniquely generalize this to 'the fate of humanity.' Quotes Aryeh Kontorovich describing his own existential crisis ~2 years earlier when a colleague solved his problem using Gemini.