Math skills are quietly changing now that AI can prove research-level problems that professional mathematicians spent decades trying to solve on their own. Trefor Bazett looks at what’s gained, and what quietly gets lost, when a calculation that used to take a notepad and a beer takes seconds instead.
The conversation gets concrete fast, using a real fireplace renovation to ask whether outsourcing the math also outsources the thinking behind it. It is the kind of everyday problem, figuring out how many bricks and how big a mortar joint, that used to force you to reason it out, and now does not.
Trefor Bazett, Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria, also asks a stranger question: what happens if AI solves one of math’s biggest open problems in a way no human can follow. That tension between getting an answer and understanding it runs through the conversation.
Topics: math skills, AI and math, research-level math problems, critical thinking, Millennium Prize problems
GUEST: Trefor Bazett | Dr. Trefor Bazett
Originally aired on2026-08-21
