Workshop: Humans, Math, and Machines

Registration is closed for in-person and remote participation. 

Date: March 7-8, 2025
Location: Social and Behavior Sciences Gateway, 1321  (campus map)
Time: 9:00am - 5:00pm, with refreshments from 8:30am.
Logistics: Paid parking available in Social Science Parking Structure

Précis: New developments in artifical intelligence have raised exciting possibilities for fruitful applications to mathematics, while also raising important questions about what mathematics is and what it is for.  While some mathematicians and technologists have speculated that AI mathematicians will soon surpass even the best human mathematicians, others have worried that automation can never truly achieve mathematicians' goals, and that a world in which mathematics is dominated by AI would be one in which mathematics loses its meaning and purpose.  The goal of this meeting is to bring together a small group of mathematicians, historians, sociologists, philosophers, technologists, and education scholars for an interdisciplinary conversation around what we want from math, AI, and math education now and in comparison to past moments of significant intellectual, scientific, technological, institutional, and social change.

Pre-Workshop Readings

Key questions we hope to explore in structured sessions at the workshop:

1) What is math and what do we want from it? What might we want from it?

2) What are the main distinctions between math research practice and practices in other sciences?  

3) How have 1) and 2) been answered in past periods of rapid technological and social change?  (Turn of the 20th cent. and the post-WWII era of particular interest.)

4) What have we learned about potential and limitations of AI and formalization technologies for math research in the past 2-3 years? For math education?

5) What do we want from (university) math education, where “we” alternately means/includes “policymakers”, “technologists”, “mathematicians”, “math educators”, “humanists”?

6) What do we want from AI and formalization for math and math education in light of the above? How do answers for the above shape our goals and expectations for the future?

Over the course of the workshop, we will hear from speakers and engage with these questions in structured sessions, comprised of two paired 30 minute talks, followed by a 15 minute break, and a 75 minute moderated discussion with the panelists.

Confirmed speakers and invited discussants: Aravind Asok (USC), Josh Batson (Anthropic), Stephanie Dick (Simon Fraser), Jordan Ellenberg (Wisconsin-Madison), Alexa McLain (UCI), Colin McLarty (Case Western), Rodrigo Ochigame (Leiden), Aparna Ravilochan (St. John's Santa Fe), Richard Rusczyk (Art of Problem Solving), Pat Shafto (Rutgers, DARPA), Ron Wilson (St. John's Santa Fe)

Tentative Schedule 

Friday, 3/7: Past and Present

9:00 - 11:30 - Session 1 - Q1 - Shafto / Batson

11:30 - 1:00 - Lunch

1:00 - 3:30 - Session 2 - Q2 - Ochigame / Dick (R)

3:45 - 6:15 - Session 3 - Q3- McLarty  / Asok

7:00 - 9:00 - Dinner (by invitation)

 

Saturday, 3/8: Future

9:00 - 11:30 - Session 4 - Q4 - AI + math now - Ellenberg (R) /  McLain

11:30 - 1:00 - Lunch

1:00 - 3:30 - Session 5 - Q5 - Education (+ future oriented) - Rusczyk / Ravilochan + Wilson

3:45 - 6:15 - Session 6 - Wrap-up/synthesis (future directions) - Weatherall / Wolfson

7:00 - 9:00 - Dinner (by invitation)