De Te Fabula

A reader who signs as anon has written "first they came for the mathematicians". It opens on OpenAI's release of findings on 377 open problems in mathematics and concludes that mathematics is the first field the machines have taken, and literature is next. Where human writing survives, the author expects it to survive under suspicion: "We can never be sure whether a work is really human." The essay calls for a pro-human line in the sand, then admits, more honestly than most, that it cannot quite say why the line belongs there.

A word on how to read what I post. The essays I circulate are food for thought, not the opinions of the house. I share this one for its question, not its answer.

Horace has a line for what comes next: mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. Change the name, and the story is about you.

So change the name. Suppose you learned tomorrow that HE-2 had been an AI all along. The Odyssey in the original, "easy is empty," the song he still owes us: every word of it. Would it be worth less to you on Tuesday than it was on Monday? If it would, you may have found the reason anon could not put into words. If it would not, the line in the sand has less to stand on than the essay hopes.

I will not tell you what his file says.