The math field is having to speedrun something that the 'thought work' field has been dealing with for a few years now. I remember when "writing code was never the point" became a mantra. There was truth in it, but removing the coding has certainly taken away a lot of the texture and the joy of the craft. Many of us feel this loss as we tech-lead teams of agents as our new job.

The present moat for coders seems to be that AI can automate tasks but not a full job (yet). But for a large proportion of mathematicians, doing these tasks really was _the_ job - complete a sufficiently difficult set of them and you get tenure - this was the sole thrust of my PhD. Now this is failing, they frantically need to pivot to save their profession from funding cuts. I am not optimistic this will work, and I'm not sure many in the field now will be content with the outcome if they succeed.

We are all staring at the same existential dread, just seeing it unfold a bit slower. We're being told that utopia is being obsolete, and that is difficult to accept.