> I didn't realize that open math problems were a finite resource.

There's an interesting commentary about this: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117237320796901560

> famous mathematician (Gauss?) dismissing interest in Fermat's Last Theorem claiming that he could crank out problems of equivalent interest.

Web search turns up Gauss's comment, with a bit more nuance: "I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of." (https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Gauss/quot...)