How AI does, and does not, change the way I do math

[This is a guest post by Rachel Webb. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] The way I do math experienced a great upheaval once before, halfway through my PhD. I was in a seminar with a group of graduate students and faculty developing new discipline-specific writing courses. The facilitator asked the question, What does it mean to write well in your discipline? Then, as now, I use writing as a proxy for doing. As a mid-career grad student, I had a quick answer to this question: good mathematical writing, hence good mathematics, is clear and correct. I was surprised at the dissimilarity between my answer and the answer of the other seminarians (who were more experienced but also other-disciplined): good writing says something interesting. This discussion unlocked for me the meaning of doing research. Doing research is searching for something interesting to say. (Of course, once you find it, you have to say it in a way that is…