正如一个处于哀悼中的人那样，山姆·奥特曼表示，在OpenAI开始向该领域发起猛攻后，数学家们经历了几个阶段。首先是难以置信。然后是痛苦。“第一天的反应就像是，‘我们完了，我们的领域结束了，’”OpenAI首席执行官说道。“‘我们在告诉研究生改换专业。’”随后是愤怒。“第三天的反应可能是：‘OpenAI这么做太可怕了，’”奥特曼在斯坦福大学最近的一次演讲中说道，当时数百名对未来职业前景感到焦虑的学生在场聆听。
Like someone in mourning, Sam Altman said mathematicians went through phases after OpenAI began its blitz into the field. First, there was disbelief. Then, there was pain. "The day one reaction was like, 'We're cooked, and our field is over,'" OpenAI's CEO said. "'We're telling our grad students to switch majors.'" After that, there was anger.
然而到了第五天，根据奥特曼的描述，数学家们开始接受他所描述的AI在数字与证明研究中如今不可剥夺的角色。“我们现在看到很多人说，实际上，我将拥有一种不同的、但希望是更好的数学家职业生涯，”奥特曼说道。
"The day three reaction was maybe like: 'It's horrible that OpenAI did this,'" Altman said at a recent talk at Stanford, before hundreds of students jittery about the viability of their future careers. Come day five, though, in Altman's telling, mathematicians began to come around to what he described as AI's now-inalienable role in the study of numbers and proofs.
奥特曼这种乐观的评估，与数学界一些人所描述的生存性变革形成了鲜明对比。在OpenAI于9月突然闯入该领域的专属领地、宣布其模型解出了纳维-斯托克斯方程——一个自19世纪以来难倒业界最聪明大脑的著名数学难题——之后，权威数学家们勃然大怒。两位学者，一位在纽约大学，另一位在Anthropic，指责OpenAI利用他们的聊天记录数据来帮助破解该难题。
"We've now seen a lot of people say, actually, I'm going to have a different but hopefully better kind of career as a mathematician," Altman said. Altman's buoyant assessment contrasts sharply with what some in the math community have described as an existential transformation. After OpenAI abruptly broke into the field's prerogatives in September, announcing its models had solved the Navier-Stokes equations — a famously challenging math puzzle that stumped the industry's brightest since the 19th Century — preeminent mathematicians erupted in fury.
数学家们还抱怨，虽然AI模型可能解出了该问题，但它没有展示解题过程，留给他们的是一项不那么值得庆祆的任务：验证它。而在所有这些争议之后，又出现了更多争议。加州理工学院的一群本科生，对AI颠覆其领域的速度感到警惕、并希望保持相关性，宣传了一场“数学马拉松”，鼓励参与者利用AI解决长期悬而未决的问题。
A pair of academics, one at New York University and another at Anthropic, accused OpenAI of using data from their chat logs to help crack the problem. Mathematicians also complained that while an AI model might have solved the problem, it didn't show its work, leaving them with the less celebratory task of verifying it. And in the wake of all that controversy, there was more controversy.
在超过700名学者签署公开信谴责该竞赛助长AI“废料”后，OpenAI退出了对该活动的赞助。（主办方此后已调整规则，竞赛定于11月举行。）最近，加州大学洛杉矶分校（UCLA）数学天才陶哲轩——他在20岁时获得博士学位——表示，数学的“浪漫时代”已经结束，因为像他这样的顶尖学者正在适应一种新的工作流程，即验证AI的工作成果，而不是单独解决问题。
A group of undergrads at Caltech, wary of how rapidly AI was disrupting their field and wanting to stay relevant, advertised a "mathathon" where participants were encouraged to use AI to solve long-standing problems. OpenAI dropped out of sponsoring the event after more than 700 academics signed an open letter denouncing the competition for promoting AI "slop." (Organizers have since made adjustments to the rules, and the competition is set for November.) More recently, Terence Tao, a math prodigy at UCLA who earned his doctorate at 20, said math's "romantic era" is over, as top academics like him adjust to a workflow that involves verifying AI's work rather than solving problems individually.
“有些东西正在失去，”陶哲轩在OpenAI本月宣布解决了700多道额外问题后说道。与此同时，站在辩论对立面的奥特曼则采取了颠覆者的乐观态度。“我不认为会出现类似的就业末日，”奥特曼谈到AI导致公司重组员工队伍时表示。然而，在数学领域，奥特曼表示，颠覆来得比其他学科和行业更快。“我认为我们大家都从未见过一个领域如此快速地经历这一周期，”他说。
"Some things are being lost," Tao said after OpenAI this month said it solved over 700 more problems. Meanwhile, Altman, sitting on the opposite side of the debate, has adopted the optimism of the disrupter. "I don't think there's going to be like a job apocalypse," Altman said of AI causing companies to restructure their workforces. In the field of math, however, Altman said the disruptions came more quickly than in other disciplines and industries. "That was the fastest that I think we've all gotten to watch a field go through this cycle," he said.