As interest in chatbots spreads like wildfire, mathematicians are beginning to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) could help them to do their work. Whether it’s assisting with verifying human-written work or suggesting new ways to solve difficult problems, automation is beginning to change the field in ways that go beyond mere calculation, researchers say.

“We’re looking at a very specific question: will machines change math?” says Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the University of Montreal in Canada. A workshop at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), this week explored this question, aiming to build bridges between mathematicians and computer scientists. “Most mathematicians are completely unaware of these opportunities,” says one of the event’s organizers, Marijn Heule, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Akshay Venkatesh, a 2018 winner of the prestigious Fields Medal who is at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, kick-started a conversation on how computers will change maths at a symposium in his honour in October. Two other recipients of the medal, Timothy Gowers at the Collège de France in Paris and Terence Tao at UCLA, have also taken leading roles in the debate.

“The fact that we have people like Fields medallists and other very famous big-shot mathematicians interested in the area now is an indication that it’s ‘hot’ in a way that it didn’t used to be,” says Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London.

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