On Maths and AI

Despite doing some work for AI people recently1, I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to the large language models. Although it’s meant as a “gosh, Pablo, how counterintuitive!” aside, I’m coming around more to the idea that:

“Computers are useless. All they can give you is answers.”

  • Pablo Picasso

My experience with AI is mixed. One thing it does exceptionally well, and where I am grateful for it, is in putting together the boring bits of code I don’t enjoy – I’m looking at you, CSS. I can delegate out the bits that aren’t fun and iterate on them, and boom! I’ve built a thing I wouldn’t have built because I didn’t fancy the styling. For coding, generally, it’s a good resource – it’s much easier to find a good answer than it is via a search.

I hang out a fair bit on Reddit. I get to see bits about rugby, cubing and Slay The Spire that I don’t get anywhere else. In the maths communities, though, there’s an awful lot of “I put my maths homework into ChatGPT and it gave me the wrong answer.”

Why… why would you do that? That’s like programming your piano études into a synthesiser. You can do it, and you get the music out, but that’s not why you’re doing the études. You’re doing the études to make you a better pianist, to improve your mental model of how music fits together, to improve yourself as a human being.

Even if your homework is tedious – and I certainly concede that there is a lot of dull and pointless homework meted out – nobody is giving it out because they want the answer. (There’s the legendary teacher response of “If all I wanted was the answer, I’d ask someone a lot smarter than you.”) It’s to develop your skills, to help you piece together a better mental model of maths, and – guess what – to improve yourself as a human being.

I have a pet theory that maths, properly done, is like comedy. It’s full of twists and surprises, and in the right hands it delights and inspires. The same material delivered by a less skilled performer might fall completely flat. Designing a routine involves thinking deeply about how it all fits together, and about how you want people to feel when they experience it.

Maths is just the same – the material is an important part of it, and you need to have it there, but if you’re doing maths properly, you should experience intense emotions. Boredom doesn’t count. This definition should make you angry. This lemma should inspire you. This question should generate delight. It makes you feel something.

There are bits of maths that are best done by a computer – long calculations and lookups – but largely, putting maths into AI is asking a machine to do your feeling for you.

  1. I’m open to more interesting work! I like solving problems. ↩