Existence problems are not optimisation problems and can't, AIUI, be tackled by AlphaEvolve. It needs an optimisation function that can be incrementally improved in order to work towards an optimal result, not a binary yes/no.
More importantly, a research mathematician is not trapped in a loop, mutating candidates for an evolutionary optimiser loop like the LLM is in AlphaEvolve. They have the agency to decide what questions to explore and can tackle a much broader range of tasks than well-defined optimisation problems, most of which (as the article says) can be approached using traditional optimisation techniques with similar results.
More importantly, a research mathematician is not trapped in a loop, mutating candidates for an evolutionary optimiser loop like the LLM is in AlphaEvolve. They have the agency to decide what questions to explore and can tackle a much broader range of tasks than well-defined optimisation problems, most of which (as the article says) can be approached using traditional optimisation techniques with similar results.