Will Robots Put Mathematicians Out of Work?

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jordan Ellenberg describes how "formal proof assitants" have been employed to check mathematicians' work and speculates about whether computers could one day put mathematicians out of business.

"Machines aren't ready to replace mathematicians yet," writes Ellenberg.

They're just checking our proofs, not generating substantial ideas of their own. But nobody knows when or whether that will change. My guess is that even then, we mathematicians will keep up our nimble dance of redefining 'mathematics' to exclude whatever machines can do.

Read the essay.