Letter to a PhD student - David Bessis

What's the point of intellectual work, if AGI is around the corner?

One morning about a week ago, I opened my direct messages tab on X and found this inbound request: I am someone finishing up a PhD in [a subject that isn’t pure math]. How should I cope with the claims that agi is here in 1-3 years and that all intellectual labor will be done. It seems many are doing great research right now but is it all for naught? Scrolling my timeline, I found a viral post (falsely) claiming that “the top physicists already surrendered” to AI superiority. All this took place while I was on a train to Paris-Saclay University, to speak on “math in the age of AI” at a…

saved by

• Angel W

related reading

• The machines are fine. I'm worried about us.ergosphere.blog
• The Old World Is Dying - by Jasmine Sunjasmi.news
• A Workaphile’s Apologymoalquraishi.wordpress.com
• What will be left for us to work on?normaltech.ai
• Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?noemamag.com
• Could This Be the Last Generation of Graduate Students? - Data & Societydatasociety.net
• Thoughts on AI in academiatheinfinitesimal.substack.com
• Preparing for the Intelligence Explosionforethought.org
• Predictions on AI (2026–2060)richardren.substack.com
• Jascha Sohl-Dickstein on X: "Title: Advice for a young investigator in the first and last days of the Anthropocene Abstract: Within just a few years, it is likely that we will create AI systems that outperform the best humans on all intellectual tasks. This will have implications for your research and https://t.co/vnST8BbKdH" / Twitterx.com
• History is Yours to Write - The Intelligence Curseintelligence-curse.ai
• When We Did Research By Handnightingal3.github.io