What it Means to Be a Mathematician When AI Does the Math

In the mid-noughties, when music by the Killers and Franz Ferdinand blared out of every pub and nightclub I passed, I spent my days and nights struggling through a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. My research focused on simulating how special light waves interact in liquid crystals and using simple equations to approximate and understand those interactions. When I look back at my thesis now, liquid crystal technology is old hat, and I imagine my work could be completed with AI assistance in a matter of days—maybe hours.But the same cannot be said for the work of the pure mathematics Ph.D. students with whom I shared a cramped office at the University of Edinburgh. At the time, I felt sorry for these colleagues, who day after day sat at their desks, seemingly tearing their hair out and making no progress. (Though I was struggling too, I was at least always making some headway.) When we finished and went our separate ways, some hadn’t even published a paper.Now, in hindsight, I finally