AI is breaking our proxies for expertise

Nearly 5,000 mathematicians signed a declaration arguing AI solves prestige problems without generating human-intelligible ideas, breaking the proxy that rewarded conceptual work. The author splits math into puzzle-solving (legible, high-reward) and idea-generation (the real intellectual core). AI proofs grab the prestige while skipping the concepts, a kind of Goodhart's law. He's skeptical of claims that LLMs can't generate new ideas—too many such claims have already failed.

Why it matters: Nearly 5,000 mathematicians signed a declaration not against AI, but naming a specific mechanism: AI brute-forces solutions, takes the credit, and leaves no human-understandable concepts behind, breaking the old contract where 'solving problems' served as a proxy for 'building...