AI should be seen as an ally to human mathematicians, not a threat

WHEN 18-time international Go champion Lee Sedol retired from the game in 2019, mathematicians everywhere will have shared a moment of quiet introspection. Three years earlier, Lee had been beaten 4-1 by an artificial intelligence, DeepMind’s AlphaGo. Having observed the machine’s rapid pace of progress since then, Lee concluded that AI is an “entity that cannot be defeated” – at least by human Go players – a verdict that prompted his retirement.

AI’s triumph in a game as complex as Go might signal that mathematics, a subject that it has had in its cross hairs from its beginnings, is also ripe for automation. As …