Knuth knows enough to poke the fate bear AI with a stick for his own curiosity but also knows he doesn’t know enough to really pontificate about it, and doesn’t want to spend his remaining time getting to know enough about it.
But he does know his binomials.
Knuth has only so many productive years left on this planet and he wants to spend them all on TAOCP (and a few other projects). He had given up email by the 90s and he is incredibly disciplined on what he devotes his time to. If you want to get in touch, send him an actual letter. Last I checked, he reads paper mail once a quarter or so. He's also an utter perfectionist in his own work, in a way that few people ever achieve.
So he's curious enough to try ChatGPT. But then he's smart enough to walk away.
He did pass judgment though by implying GPT is not "authentic and trustworthy". That what got me thinking, not his desire to focus on other things (it's his time, he can do whatever he wants).
I think he nailed it on that, chatGPT is not trustworthy. Not sure about authentic, halucinations could be authentic ideas in their own right
Knuth writes people checks for reporting bugs in his software or errors in his books, including at least one $327.68 check for a TeX bug. According to Wikipedia, he has written over $20,000 in checks. (Relatively few of these are ever cashed.)
Knuth's standard of "authentic and trustworthy" is set remarkably high.
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I myself shall certainly continue to leave such research to others, and to devote my time to developing concepts that are authentic and trustworthy. And I hope you do the same.
Best regards, Don
PS: Please reply only with respect to binomial coefficients, because I've already spent way too much time on the topic above! The topic is timely, and important enough not to ignore completely, but it's emphatically not for me.