The proof is in the prompt: why math is not going away

OpenAI’s October 6 release of hundreds of mathematical results has produced another round of headlines: AI Solved One Math Problem and Everyone Freaked Out. It Just Cracked Hundreds More. — The Wall Street Journal OpenAI drops another batch of mathematical breakthroughs — The Verge OpenAI’s math breakthrough points beyond math — Axios [Note: The initial release contained 722 manuscripts grouped into 372 families of related results, which explains the different numbers being circulated. These include companion papers, consequences, and alternative proofs, so the manuscript count is not a count of separate problems solved.] This has again invited the typical predictions of mathematicians becoming obsolete or math dying, along with armchair diagnoses about mathematicians having an existential crisis. But I have long predicted that AI will not make math careers obsolete or dismantle the “math hierarchy” of elite institutions, journals, tenure, and so on. Hierarchies persist because…