Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the future of mathematics

[This is a guest post by Steven Strogatz. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] WIRED reported today that I began to cry while talking about AI and mathematics. But the article didn’t explain what moved me. The truth is, I’m not entirely sure myself. (A disclosure upfront: ChatGPT helped me write this post. I’m tweaking it a little to sound more like myself.) First, thanks to WIRED reporter Isabella Ward. She had the difficult job of distilling a long, wide-ranging conversation into a timely piece about the amazing events of the past week. And she had to put it together in one day! A lot inevitably got left out. OK, so why did I get choked up? It wasn’t about AI taking my job. I’m 67 and nearing retirement. I also love playing around with AI and find it exhilarating. I use it in research, brainstorming, and learning—and, as you can see, to put this post together. So what was it then? I think it was when I tried to convey the…