@tao@mathstodon.xyz Pure mathematics is dead. Long live mathematics. I think all of interesting mathematics is applied mathematics in the end. Powerful AI means that the level at which we can do applied mathematics will be so much higher, though, and many more people will be able to be "mathematicians". The importance of pure mathematics is often argued for by citing examples of important applications that used pure mathematics invented a long time before the application became apparent. We can reverse this argument: by properly developing the mathematics our applications need, we surely will obtain all of interesting pure mathematics.