Interview with Micah Zarin

I’m not completely happy with this interview with Micah Zarin. It was nothing he did, it was me. I forgot to say that current-day AI wastes a lot of energy, and companies hope to use it to lay off people, and oligarchs are using it to extract lots of money from everyone. While obvious, these things are tremendously important and I should have emphasized them. I was distracted by Micah’s fear that AI would make a career in math pointless, which really surprised me. So instead of giving my general thoughts on AI, I focused on putting myself in his place and imagining what to do in that situation. I suggested doing math with the help of AI as a way to overcome his fear and go ahead doing math while keeping abreast of new developments. If AI overtakes humans in math in Michah’s lifetime, which is far from certain, this could be a way to keep productively participating in math throughout this process. But I warned him to be very critical of what LLMs say, to lessen the danger of getting…