The Jacobian conjecture falls to AI

This went viral today, “AI’s solution to 87-year-old riddle takes mathematicians by surprise.” Levent Alpöge at Harvard University wrote on X on 19 July that the Jacobian conjecture – which academics have spent decades trying to prove was true – is actually false, giving a tiny, 216-character counterexample as proof. I will admit I wish I had thought of this (not the conjecture), but just running it into a prompt. This is the math-equivalent of winning the lottery, where the price is worldwide fame and publication in a top journal, which, TBH, is better than money away. We’re going to see even more of this, if it hasn’t happened already. Everyone is going to start full-sending open conjectures into all the models at massive scale, in the hope of hitting math paydirt. It makes me ask, “What is the point of studying math?” when AI and luck matter more, either in terms of choosing problems that are tractable with AI or crafting the perfect prompt. Or, “Why even bother going to university…