Altman and AI: the debate over mathematicians and professional guilds

Sam Altman, the CEO who rattles the guilds

According to a message in the thread, Sam Altman declared that mathematicians are going through the stages of grief over the advance of AI. The remark struck a chord on a forum where users celebrate the fact that a physicist at the University of Michigan now solves in two minutes problems that used to take him months of begging colleagues to sustancia ilegal. Some argue that Altman is a ruthless provocateur, and that is precisely why people like him.

The mathematicians' grief and the Michigan physicist

The trigger is an article in which, according to one forum user, Altman claims that mathematicians are more or less going through the famous stages of grief. The community reads the remark as a calculated provocation. Gabriele Carcassi, a researcher in the foundations of quantum physics at the University of Michigan, recounted, according to that same message, that he used to spend months begging mathematicians for help and that now a single conversation with AI is enough to get past advanced obstacles in two minutes. The anecdote is repeated as proof that the displacement is not just rhetoric.

Doctors, cab drivers and professional bodies: the shield

The conversation drifts toward which guilds will hold out. Some argue that doctors will be among the last to be replaced thanks to professional bodies woven into the structures of the state: AI will diagnose, but the doctor's signature will still be needed to prescribe. The scenario one user paints is a society with a token 800-euro minimum income and shielded professionals. The parallel with Uber and cab drivers is used as a precedent: the technology spreads in two days and Spain ends up accepting it.

The "it won't pay your rent" line and the bubble

The recurring jab is that of the skeptic who dismisses AI with "it won't pay your rent or your mortgages." Against that, users celebrate how a slight raise of Altman's eyebrow sends entire guilds to the unemployment line. 2027 is marked as a historic year. The discussion turns toxic with personal attacks on Altman that this article does not reproduce; the core, however, is an economic thesis: AI does not need licensed professionals' permission to be useful.

AI as a substitute for the family doctor

The prospect one user raises is that of a street kid with a vocational diploma operating a robot with AI through two buttons. It sounds like a caricature, but it captures the intuition that the barrier to entry into regulated professions will fall. The counterpoint is that a diagnosis without a signature is not valid for a prescription. That is where the battle lies: between real utility and the legal monopoly.

The unsettling figure is not the mathematicians' one, but the 800 euros: AI promises to destroy skilled jobs and, at the same time, the public cushion on the horizon is a minimum income. Altman smiles for the photo.