“People have told me that they think that within the next three to five years, AI models will be able to solve every problem in the US Mathematical Olympiad,” former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel said during a discussion on Conversations with Tyler, emphasizing that the future is worse for people who are more interested in math than language.
“Silicon Valley in the 21st century is too heavily weighted towards mathematicians,” Thiel added, saying he wasn't sure exactly why, “but I do believe it's extremely precarious and will get worse.”
Mathematical ability has become a test of everything. Thiel said that people who go to medical school have to study math and calculus, and are selected for their abilities. “I don't know if that really correlates with neurosurgical dexterity,” he added. “I don't want the person operating on my brain to be doing prime factorization in their head.”
Thiel also said this was similar to his own bias against judging people on their chess skills, which was eliminated in 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov. “I wonder if the same thing will happen with math, and if this is a long-overdue rebalancing of society,” he added.
Similarly, in an episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, Sam Altman recalled how calculators were perceived in his math classes: “We never had a chance to use them,” he said, adding that, conversely, he had to master them in real life to excel later in life.
The importance of learning mathematics has been emphasized since school days. To be a successful engineer, mathematics is a must. Furthermore, as computer science has become mainstream, society has begun to distinguish between people who are good at mathematics and those who are not.
Now, AI is breaking down this barrier in a positive way: tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are enabling anyone to become a developer without needing to study math, democratizing access to fields that once required deep knowledge.
But interestingly, despite AI's improving capabilities, it's still not very good at math: Recently, ChatGPT, with its Wolfram plugin, scored 96% in the UK A-level maths exam, a required qualification for entering the AI field.
This tells us that if AI is able to pass the test to enter the field, education systems across the world will need to undergo major changes to adapt to the changing paradigm of mathematics education.
