A fable

The news this week that OpenAI had released a document listing hundreds of big problems which its robot claims to have solved (including the Boone–Higman conjecture and the Unique Games Conjecture) was the main topic of conversation over coffee. I strongly suspect that AI will replace the weather as a conversational gambit, at least among mathematicians; this has happened in St Andrews. It raises some important issues for mathematicians, which I hope to discuss in a later post. But it put me in mind of a science fiction story I read long ago, so long that I don’t claim to remember the plot accurately. But I think it went something like this. In any case, what is below will serve as my fable, even if not accurate. We discovered an extraterrestrial civilisation sending out radio messages which seem like ordinary conversation. On investigation these turn out to be silicon-based life forms which actually communicate with one another by electromagnetic waves. Further investigation reveals…