A.I. Killed the Math Brain

The New York Times ^ | June 2, 2025 | Leif Weatherby

[E. Pluribus Unum]

ChatGPT was released two and a half years ago, and we have been in a public panic ever since. Artificial intelligence can write in a way that passes for human, creating a fear that relying too heavily on machine-generated text will diminish our ability to read and write at a high level. We’ve heard that the college essay is dead, and that alarming number of students use A.I. tools to cheat their way through college. This has the potential to undermine the future of jobs, education and art all at once.

The Titanic is indeed headed toward the iceberg, but the largest problem — at least at the moment — is not the college essay, the novel or the office memo. It’s computer code. I realized this last year when I was teaching a course on A.I., language and philosophy. When I asked my students how they use chatbots, one told me that whenever he has a spreadsheet full of data (such as results from a lab experiment or information collected from a survey), he was trained in high school to write a quick bit of code to parse and analyze that data. But now, he told me, he just throws the spreadsheet into ChatGPT, which analyzes it more quickly and requires him to do almost nothing.

That’s when it hit me: A.I. is just as much a challenge to numeracy — our knowledge and ability to use mathematics and reason quantitatively — as it is to literacy.

In February, the A.I. engineer Andrej Karpathy reported on X that he was engaged in a new form of software development he called...

[_Jim]

I made use of MathCad 2.5 back in the DOS days too, when the on-screen editor used now obscure keyboard commands to create formulas in the on-screen graphics proprietary to MathCad ... MC was a fantastic tool to take a textbook EE formulas and do some what-ifs closer to what one would do normally on a chalkboard, and clearly so, as opposed to re-writing equations to fit into SuperCalc or early Excel spreadsheet ‘cells’ ...

Nowadays one can go over to Wolfram Mathematica website and do a lot more than was ever conceived possible! Including chemistry and physics constants and element properties accessible in their online database(s).

[E. Pluribus Unum]

At least they don't tell you 2 + 2 = 5. 🤡

[motor_racer]

First they came for the typists and clerks.
I said nothing because my small company made more money. Word processing let me do it myself.

Next they came for the bookkeepers.
All they did was enter numbers into spreadsheets and do arithmetic. I said nothing. The software made it more accurate.

Next they came for the draftsmen.
Anyone could learn CAD software in a little time. Why spend years learning how to make block letters and keep line weights even.?

Then they came for the structural engineers.
Finite element analysis was easy now! I don’t even need to understand the theory!

Then they came for the quality control engineers.
Statistical processing with my software guaranteed my company could work without them.

Next they came for the forklift operators.
The autonomous machines never complained, never took a day off.

Then they came for the accountants.
Business reporting and planning was so much easier! No meetings to buy coffee and donuts for anymore!

Next they came for the design engineers.
Our new tools can create new products without human assistance!

Then they came for the bankers.
Our bank showed us how I can do it all with just a few clicks!

And next they came for the marketing department.
AI can tell me what my customers really want!

And finally they came for me.
My computer tools had created products that were dangerous because they didn’t anticipate what my customers would do with them!

And when I called for a lawyer, the computer put me on hold.
Still waiting.

[alternatives?]

Universities have not taught critical thinking skills for years. It was believed to be micro-aggressions.

[Waverunner]

Teach the knowledge and problem solving, but people use devices to overcome limitations all the time. Parachutes come to mind immediately. If you’re math impaired but a tool can help you become a great designer, why not use the tool? We use computers to overcome poor drafting skills every day in engineering.

[Waverunner]

Magnus Robot Fighter in a nutshell.

[central_va]

Really?

[Fury]

Perhaps.

For an area of environmental history in which I am considered an authoritative expert, AI such as ChatGPT is woefully ignorant. It pulls answers from poorly sourced documents and cannot provide documentation from primary sources.

No doubt it will improve. But currently it is acting as a web scraper and little else.

[Karliner]

Math was not fun for me early on but somewhere in the process, I think trig and Geometry formulas it changed. I started liking the steps and getting credit and encouragement showing my work, getting it wrong and yet getting some credit.

It started being a game to have no red lines and the chalk talk
Cool super nerds showed me my mistakes and encouraged me, showed basic math patterns and algebraic tricks to make the upper division math a bit easier.
But, yes, racist. Who needs it?

[bigbob]

Might not be all bad.

Consider a parallel: “Typing killed cursive writing”...

So what? Is there really a loss to the human race if this happens?

It’s not a perfect analogy but apply some logic to doomsday fears about AI.

[Regulator]

Well, at least we’ll have great poetry from Diane Keaton.

[TennesseeProfessor]

Right now AI is in a tricky spot. It is good enough to solve Freshman-difficulty problems, but not good enough to solve senior ones let alone professional ones.

And yet, the way to learn to solve problems is by solving them, starting with the easy ones. The article is absolutely correct that a distressingly large number of students are using AI to cheat, and then are woefully unprepared for advanced coursework.

[Tell It Right]

The same for writing code. The other day I asked ChatGPT to write a C# program that proves the Pythagorean Theorem. It wrote C# code ... but it didn't prove the PT. The C# program just calculated the hypotenuse side for you if you give it the two lengths.

That's an example of how AI is helpful in writing code, but still a long way to go to understanding the needs of the Functional Users and Project Managers I've had to serve over the many decades in different industries.

[Fury]

I do think Gen AI it will get better over time. But it’s going to take years. Right now it seems to be more of a generalist in nature and not a specialist.

[Inyo-Mono]

I still have my original first edition of “Magnus Robot Fighter,” first 12 issues in fact.

[Waverunner]

I have several of my old ones, as well as the hardbound reprints from dark horse, and some of the new ones. I hope my granddaughters will like them when they get a little older, if only for the artwork.

[minnesota_bound]

If you cheat in school you will hit a wall when you try getting a job.

[Waverunner]

I've done a python app for my phone. it saves you learning the minutiae of a new language or os.
but you still are ruled by GIGO.

[Inyo-Mono]

Yeah, I loved the artwork, saving for my grandkids too, they are a little bit too young right now.

[ViLaLuz]

Common Core killed the brain.