Fields Medalist Warns of AI Rush: "Like a Game Without Purpose"

[Anchor]

World-renowned mathematicians have expressed concerns over the unchecked speed race among artificial intelligence companies. They warn that mathematics could lose its original purpose and turn into a mere game.

Reporter Choi Seung-hun asked Huh Junei, a professor who won the Fields Medal—often considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics—for his thoughts on the matter.

[Reporter]

Recently, after OpenAI announced that it deployed AI agents to find a solution to a 90-year-old mathematical problem in just 88 hours, 25 past Fields Medalists—including Professor Huh Junei of Princeton University, who received the prize in 2022—issued a joint statement.

They pointed out that "solving problems is merely a tool and a proxy for the fundamental goal of conceptual understanding and insight," criticizing recent moves by AI companies to use solving difficult problems as a stage for technological competition as "harmful."

Within three days of the statement's release, some 6,000 researchers worldwide joined in support.

In an interview with SBS, Professor Huh warned that mathematics could lose its intrinsic purpose amid such competition.

[Huh Junei / Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University: (I'm concerned that) this kind of progression, which loses the original purpose of (mathematics) and resembles a game in some ways, could become entrenched.]

He also expressed concern that if AI equipped with massive resources solves difficult problems in an instant, students might fall into intellectual defeatism.

[Huh Junei / Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University: It plunges you into skepticism, making you wonder, 'Is this even meaningful?' when you think about starting a research project now and hoping for results 10 years later.]

From January to August of this year, math-related posts uploaded to preprint servers reached approximately 47,000, surging by more than 33% compared to a year earlier.

The academic community believes that while papers are being mass-produced with the help of AI, it remains uncertain whether humans can fully understand and verify all of their contents and processes.

They warn that if the repetitive cycle continues—where AI learns from AI-generated results that humans have not properly comprehended—knowledge may increase, but humanity's ability to understand on its own and ask questions will weaken.

[Huh Junei / Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University: I believe that being constantly curious, maintaining intellectual curiosity, and creating new horizons is the most important role of a human being, of a mathematician.]

Experts also point out that to move away from reckless competition for achievements, open-source AI and public support systems that anyone can utilize are necessary to prevent AI resources from being concentrated in a small number of companies.

(Camera: Park Hyun-chul, Video Editing: Shin Seeun, Design: Lee Gajin)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.