In 1915, Albert Einstein stood before the Prussian Academy of Science and revealed the now-famous equations of his general theory of relativity. Einstein and relativity are synonymous today with genius, but these revelations were initially met with indifference, in part because the maths was too radical for his peers to fully digest.
Today, tech firms would have us believe we are on the brink of 鈥渟uperintelligent鈥� artificial intelligence capable of outperforming experts in most domains, producing scientific breakthroughs on a par with Einstein. As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei put it, we will see 鈥溾��. Claims like these are often provided with little evidence, and identifying genius or elevated intelligence is a murky endeavour.
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But one corner of academia that might be seeing superintelligence come to pass is mathematics. In this week鈥檚 cover story, we learn how mathematicians are in a state of wonder and panic about the rapid rise of AI鈥檚 mathematical ability.
This glimpse of the future doesn鈥檛 appear to exclude us, however. AI鈥檚 successes also show how integral human mathematicians are to the scientific process. The most impressive AI-fuelled discoveries, such as OpenAI鈥檚 recent falsification of an 80-year-old conjecture, are credible only because mathematicians say so. We report how humans are already using AI鈥檚 ideas to make progress on other maths conundrums.
AI's successes also show how integral human mathematicians are to the scientific process
If this spreads to the other sciences, then it suggests we won鈥檛 be following AI geniuses, but will instead look to people who know how to use these tools and insights best. This might not be quite like the superintelligence that AI companies proselytise, but it could be closer to how human genius has always functioned.
Without Einstein鈥檚 colleagues, like Karl Schwarzschild or Willem de Sitter, who went on to apply relativity to our universe, predicting black holes and an inflationary universe, it wouldn鈥檛 have had the outsize impact on our understanding of reality that it does today. Genius, by itself, has never been sufficient.
