Mathematics and AI

Referring to certain software and hardware as "AI" and to such alleged "AI" as an agent "solving" problems in mathematics is profoundly misleading. The programs in question are not "intelligent" and are not "solving" mathematical problems as agents in any philosophically meaningful sense. And these programs will certainly never "replace" human scientific endeavor in any conceivable way, rather they are, and will ever remain, mere tools.

Let us be clear. Human beings can only process, check and produce data within definite finite bounds based on symbol systems with definite finite bounds and bounded fragments of finitarily determined rules.

Thus it is a triviality and a truism that all human external symbolic activity and productions could in principle - given a massive enough set of data is made available - be mimicked and processed by brute-force. We can imagine a supercomputer in space with processing power and storage a billion times surpassing any of the human bounds of symbol processing and text processing, checking and production. We can also give our supercomputer some kind of super-luminal processing velocity. This supercomputer through brute-force and crude machine learning algorithms would beat and outperform every man-made "AI" in every possible domain in an instant. There is nothing surprising here and there is nothing here that has anything remotely to do with "intelligence".

Intelligence is rather reflected in doing much with little external, material, processing power. Chess programs are just cheating machines. Our hypothetical supercomputer would beat any current Go or Chess AI and that would not make it "intelligent" in any meaningful way.

As for mathematics, let us take a proof assistant such as Agda or Idris 2. The mathematician develops a theory (or formalizes a previous theory) by means of type definitions, records and type declarations for terms. The problem is to find explicit proof terms. This could be attempted by using brute-force, heuristics or any kind of machine learning method. And this search could fail. Or the search algorithm could be refined and altered. There is nothing unusual going on here. The algorithm is not "doing mathematics", it is not constructing theories, refining definitions, improving its own heuristics or being telologically oriented towards a certain architectural vision. It is the mathematician's legitimate tool.

Speaking of "AI" "solving" mathematical problems or "doing" mathematics or potentially "replacing" mathematicians is sheer and utter nonsense.

If even published journal papers can contain errors, I certainly would not trust any "mathematical" output produced by generative AI that was not formalized and checked in all its details by current proof assistants and proof checkers.