STEM was supposed to be a safe bet. Now young mathematicians fear it’s all over — 'incredibly uncertain about our own futures'

This year has been a banner one for automated, algorithmic number crunchers, which have managed to disprove long-established theories and solve hundreds of open equations, some of them having previously baffled human arithmeticians for decades.

It’s exciting progress for technology, but also daunting for humanity, representing what so many of us fear: machines not just replacing, but besting us.

‘Incredibly uncertain about our own futures’

The fact that entry-level professionals across sectors are most impacted by the rise in artificial intelligence and facing dire unemployment rates served as the impetus for the MIT paper, with researchers acknowledging that though there has been talk about neural networks’ influence on STEM disciplines, it’s mostly been among more established voices who are less exposed to the immediate risk of replacement.

“The personal stakes are highest for early career researchers,” they assert, expressing a goal of not just “providing a platform for graduate students and postdocs to voice their opinions, concerns, and experiences” on the matter, but also drawing authorities’ awareness to the level of crisis younger people are facing.

“We’re being forced to reckon with existential questions about a field we love, all while incredibly uncertain about our own futures,” the team writes.

“As AI companies turn to the field of math as a new benchmarking standard, frontier models are getting better at proving mathematical theorems at a faster rate than most of us were prepared for. As a result, mathematicians are grappling with the fact that a core part of our jobs could soon be automated.”

And the results speak for themselves.

By the numbers

Of the nearly 300 people surveyed, most of whom hailed from the U.S., an astounding 81% have considered altering their career trajectory because of how chatbots and similar tech are developing. A total of 17% ultimately decided against shifting paths at this point, while 8% have already changed course, and 56% are still undecided.