The real issue is that there is "research" and then there is research. Most publications are simple recapitulations of well known ideas but applied to somewhat unique environments. Imagine if you are a carpenter, you are just using your existing tools to make more stuff, but fundamentally what you are doing is no different from what any other carpenter is doing. It's workmanlike production.
The truly valuable stuff is coming up with new ideas, that is, new techniques that allow for breakthroughs. That is rare, is done by only a handful of people in any decade, and is very, very hard. When you study a book on the history of math, you see the names of people that created brand new techniques which allowed them to solve problems no one else could solve.
But you still have that 99.9% that needs jobs, and they need to publish, but what they are doing can be mostly replaced by AI.
The specific situation with Navier-Stokes really highlights this. Mathematicians came up with the technique, but the AI managed to apply it faster than even the technique inventors. So it appears that AI is now good enough to be doing the workmanlike stuff, which is the bread and butter of a lot of mathematicians that are just trying to get their publications in so they are not fired.
I do think this creates real problems for the field and that some changes are necessary.
The truly valuable stuff is coming up with new ideas, that is, new techniques that allow for breakthroughs. That is rare, is done by only a handful of people in any decade, and is very, very hard. When you study a book on the history of math, you see the names of people that created brand new techniques which allowed them to solve problems no one else could solve.
But you still have that 99.9% that needs jobs, and they need to publish, but what they are doing can be mostly replaced by AI.
The specific situation with Navier-Stokes really highlights this. Mathematicians came up with the technique, but the AI managed to apply it faster than even the technique inventors. So it appears that AI is now good enough to be doing the workmanlike stuff, which is the bread and butter of a lot of mathematicians that are just trying to get their publications in so they are not fired.
I do think this creates real problems for the field and that some changes are necessary.