AI is definitely changing maths -- senior/established researchers can now use AI models to speed up their work, which is going to affect early career researchers. At a recent maths and open science conference I attended [1] virtually every speaker detailed how they'd used AI to generate new results/ideas etc.
The change is happening, I don't think we can stop it now.
Yes, I share your optimism overall, although I think it is raising a question of what the future role of the researcher is (much like the current debate on developer roles).
I attended a conference on AI for maths and open science a few weeks ago, and was struck by just how many examples of AI-supported solutions there already are. Virtually every speaker had an example of either their own use of (often the frontier) AI models in solving a problem that was previously too hard (for various definitions of hard).
I wrote up a few notes [1], and most of the speaker videos are available via the conference website [2].
This is such a well written story, and congratulations Ben, it sounds like it's been a lot of hard but ultimately successful work!
I know you'll deservedly get a lot of credit for all your work in remastering the game, but you should also get credit for how you've woven this narrative together, it's a lovely read. Thank you for taking the time to write it up, and good luck with the Steam release, and whatever project you take on next! :)
The change is happening, I don't think we can stop it now.
[1] https://scholarlyfutures.substack.com/p/ai-and-the-practical...