Fears of artificial intelligence (AI) outsmarting humans anytime soon are overblown, leading mathematicians have assured. AI is nowhere close to acquiring critical thinking, or reaching scientific breakthrough that humans are capable of, they said.
While they admit that AI is a powerful technology that will have a profound impact on society and economy, they emphasise that children should be encouraged to enjoy mathematics—’Math for Math’s sake’—to help develop creativity and problem-solving skills.
“…that deep kind of critical thinking, analytic thinking, that keeps us producing new knowledge, that AI is not really doing yet, and whether it will be able to or not, that’s sort of still an open question,” Manjul Bhargava, professor of mathematics at Princeton University, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2014 for his work on geometry of numbers, told Mint. “It will take years for it to do the kind of critical thinking, analytical thinking, new knowledge creation, kind of creativity that’s required to make scientific and mathematical breakthroughs. It’s not really close yet”.
The prestigious Fields Medal honour, named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields, is considered as the Nobel prize of mathematics.
His comments come at a time when companies across the world are investing in AI-related infrastructure, and upskilling programmes just when there is a looming fear that AI will replace human jobs. In fact, Microsoft, IBM , Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Amazon and Meta are some of the firms that have retrenched employees as AI gets deployed across hierarchies.
But the work that AI can do today is still relegated to the content that is fed into it. Bhargava pointed out that in the next two-three years, AI will solve problems because it would have read all undergraduate math and science books and through large language learning models “mimic the kinds of solutions that are in all these books”.
He rejected the notion that mathematicians are worried about AI.
“No, there’s not so much fear. There’s more excitement. Right now, there’s a lot of humour and laughter at the kinds of answers that AI gives to slightly more complex math questions… But it’s not necessarily going to be coming up with anything that humans don’t know. So, in that sense, it’s not really doing critical thinking, it is doing pattern matching”.
V. Kumar Murty, who teaches mathematics at the University of Toronto, Canada, told Mint that the job losses seen at companies are temporary. “What we should really be thinking of is, okay, if certain jobs disappear, what new job is it going to enable, that doesn’t exist now? What new opportunities is it going to create for me that don’t exist now?”
Murty, who held the post of director of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Canada, highlighted the need to encourage math learning for the sake of the subject and to move away from rote learning or focus only on entrance exams for an engineering seat.
In India, more than 1.3 million students appeared for this year’s engineering entrance test in a bid to secure admission to one of the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) or other government-funded engineering institutions.
For many students, the road to a reputable engineering college goes through coaching hubs like Kota and Sikar (Rajasthan). The professors want that outlook to change.
“The engine of innovation is mathematics. What is Google? It’s linear algebra. The robotic vacuum cleaner is computational geometry. Satellite transmission is polynomial over finite fields. Any piece of technology that is in common use today has, at its root, mathematics… If you want to have that culture of strong research, strong innovation, you need to let the people who do math for math’s sake have opportunity as well,” Murty.
Bhargava is more optimistic that classroom teaching is going beyond chalkboards and there is importance given to interdisciplinary teaching where subjects are not offered depending on grades with the belief that one is superior to the other.
Coincidentally, Bhargava and Murty are also involved in the Lodha Mathematical Sciences Institute, a newly-launched privately-funded math research institute in Mumbai. While Bhargava is the inaugural thematic programme head, Murty is the director at the institute.
