Lesson learnt? None.

A particular line from the open statement mathematicians wrote against the design of the latest Caltech Mathathon, due to happen in late October, has stuck with me:Mathematicians do not only prove theorems: they also take measures to ensure that the future of a field remains healthy after the extraction of a result. They do so by sharing their results and explaining their methods to others at talks and conferences. They mentor students and postdocs so that the next generation can advance research further, and take care not to scoop other mathematicians at the last mile.That mathematicians do these other things has not been acknowledged as vociferously in public as it has been in the last few weeks, as AI behemoths like OpenAI and Anthropic have raced to solve mathematical problems, in the process taking away the thing mathematicians generally work towards and yet, by solving them, producing none of the things mathematicians look for as they work. Put differently, what the models spit…