The dark art of maths and the AI revolution | Letter
TL;DR
Bev Littlewood reminds us that mathematics has been the prime driver of the rise in AI, in response to an editorial You report in your leader that some mathematicians feel discomfiture at the AI solution to a Navier-Stokes problem (The Guardian view on AI v mathematicians: humans are still vital to the field, but tech firms refuse to see that, 20 September). I fear that they have been hoist by their own petard: mathematics, after all, has been the prime mover of the AI revolution.
Nauti's Take
For AI teams, the practical test for mathematical results is traceability: Can the solution be reproduced, checked, and applied under new conditions? A plausible output is insufficient in scientific workflows when the system hides its assumptions, proof steps, or error bounds.
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