Will AI Replace Mathematicians As It Can Solve Complex Maths Problems?

Harin - Dec 13, 2019

The answer is no. In fact, rather than being replaced, mathematical research can benefit from AI and automated computations.

Although this application of AI seems to be unusual, it actually works. This is known as symbolic mathematics which started over 30 years ago. Symbolic mathematics often relies on high precision and high-performance computing, aiming at automatically computing or solving. It will work on some mathematical expressions to identify the exact value as well as looking for patterns in numbers and proving theorems that haven’t been proved by any mathematician, and more. Regarding experimental mathematics, this application of Ai is particularly useful.

It can deal with the work of students who are in high school and college and solve all their math problems in a second. Since these kinds of tools are already available online, some of them are even free of cost, smart students have already installed and used them. The most popular one is WolframAlpha. The application cuts down the time it normally takes a person to solve a maths problem.

AI-maths — Does this mean that in the future, mathematical education and research will become obsolete, surpassed by automated computations?

Does this mean that in the future, mathematical education and research will become obsolete, surpassed by automated computations? The answer is no. In fact, rather than being replaced, mathematical research can benefit from automated computations.

It will save time for professional mathematicians when dealing with various tedious formulas and allowing them to work on higher-level mathematics.

Up to this point, AI can’t deal with every mathematical problem. Sometimes, the automatically computed solutions don’t make any sense.

Another area where AI could be put into use is to detect whether a number with up to 50 digits, correlates with ab exact mathematical constant. As the number could be a result of a combination of multiple constants, this isn’t a simple problem.

And if AI could write papers that would be sent to scientific journals, it would allow mathematicians to put their efforts in real research as well as more interesting stuff. Some prestigious math journals have already accepted automatically generated papers. There are some tools to do so.