Matilde Marcolli: ‘Duet for the end of math’

A four-page essay (PDF on Marcolli’s Caltech page). Its footnote reads “written 09/10/2026, to appear in Newsletter of the London Mathematical Society”; we read the date as 10 September 2026, because the PDF was created on 18 Sept and Gil Kalai linked it on 22 Sept. Marcolli asks why automated solutions of well-known conjectures send “shock waves of panic” through the profession and answers that the field gave “Famous Conjectures™ and Big Problems™” a disproportionate role, tying careers, prizes and power to a narrow set of goals reached by hyperspecialization. She contrasts this with theoretical physics, which in her view rewards original ideas that connect many questions, and calls mathematical Platonism “a subtle propaganda instrument” that makes mathematics look like a zero-sum conquest. She describes AI systems as fed with human work, “often with unauthorized access to ongoing unpublished work of human mathematicians”. For her, mathematics is “a language to make sense of reality and a form of self-expression, much like the arts”, so AI solutions are “essentially irrelevant” to the reason for doing it. She proposes a profession more like the conductor or composer than the solo virtuoso. If conjecture trophies run out, “the sooner the better! Good riddance!”. The essay was read in full (PDF text extracted with pdftotext on 2026-10-13).