"With powerful computers, I sometimes feel less motivated to study deep mathematical topics like differential equations and statistics. Computers can math quickly, which makes the effort of learning the fundamentals feel less urgent.
For those who have been in the industry longer, why do you think it’s still important to stay strong in mathematical fundamentals?"
Because otherwise you are training to become a button pressing cocaine monkey?
Ok, some important context for non-Swedes.
Anyone can get access to all Swedish (non-protected but those are a very VERY small subset) personal identification numbers by simply signing an agreement with SPAR[1] (the Swedish national people database). Identification numbers per se are not particularly useful or hard to get, they are effectively public information. Using SPAR you can also get the home (and any additional) addresses of individuals
A Swedish citizen database is... you know. fun. But not exactly hard to get hold of.
Everyone will define the Singularity in a different way. To me it's simply the point at which nothing makes sense anymore and this is why my personal reflection is aligned with the piece, that there is a social Singularity that is already happening. It won't help us when the real event horizon hits (if it ever does, its fundamentally uninteresting anyway because at that point all bets are off and even a slow take-off will make things really fucking weird really quickly).
The (social) Singularity is already happening in the form of a mass delusion that - especially in the abrahamic apocalyptical cultures - creates a fertile breeding ground for all sorts of insanity.
Like investing hundreds of billions of dollars in datacenters. The level of committed CAPEX of companies like Alphabet, Meta, Nvidia and TSMC is absurd. Social media is full of bots, deepfakes and psy-ops that are more or less targeted (exercise for the reader: write a bot that manages n accounts on your favorite social media site and use them to move the overton window of a single individual of your choice, what would be the total cost of doing that? If you answer is less than $10 - bingo!).
We are in the future shockwave of the hypothetical Singularity already. The question is only how insane stuff will become before we either calm down - through a bubble collapse and subsequent recession, war or some other more or less problematic event - or hit the event horizon proper.
You know that this is bullshit right? We can all, regardless of our age, differentiate between meaningful and meaningless work. The fact that we need money to fulfil our obligations to our family, the bank or whatever it might be is completely separate from that. We can do meaningless jobs if we have to at any age. This does not make them meaningful. If a person, at any age, can choose between a meaningless and meaningful job - which do you think they would take?
If they have to choose between a meaningless job and starvation?
Cool. Now grow up and do some meaningful with your time. And so should I.
Because otherwise you are training to become a button pressing cocaine monkey?