Though, if you start solving problems that humans can't or haven't solved, then questions of capacity won't matter much. A speedup in the movement of the maths frontier would be worth many power stations.
For some time a 'superhuman math AI' could be useful for company advertising and getting the attention of VCs. But eventually it would be pretty clear that innovative math research, with vanishingly few exceptions, isn't very useful for making revenue. (I am a mathematician and this is meant with nothing but respect for math research.)
As a mathematician, of course I agree. But in a sentence like:
> A speedup in the movement of the maths frontier would be worth many power stations
who is it 'worth' it to? And to what end? I can say with some confidence that many (likely most, albeit certainly not all) mathematicians do not want data centers and power stations to guzzle energy and do their math for them. It's largely a vision imposed from without by Silicon Valley and Google research teams. What do they want it for and why is it (at least for now) "worth" it to them?
Personally, I don't believe for a second that they want it for the good of the mathematical community. Of course, a few of their individual researchers might have their own personal and altruistic motivations; however I don't think this is so relevant.
There is something called applied math, and there is a big gulf between applied math and pure math. This new technology has the potential of making use of much more "pure math" for applied math, unifying much of pure math, applied math, and programming. I don't really care about the RH, I care about that.
