Because there will be so much more to learn?

Do you really want to spend your career cleaning out the Augean stables instead of advancing the state of the art? Seems miserable.

AI wouldn't advance the state of the art? It promises to do it at an incredible rate.

What you are complaining about is not that the state of the art wouldn't be advanced, but that vanity would not be served. Vanity (as part of Pride) is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason, and Pride has been described as the root sin, the worst of the lot, since all others stem from it.

Cool. And I'm sure LeBron James would be thrilled that he could spend the rest of his career watching robots playing on TV.

This AI shit is boring as fuck. It's automating the fun things, so theres more time to do the miserable bits.

He is paid because people pay to watch him play. If people were as happy to watch robots play he'd be out of a job. Making him happy isn't the reason he's paid.

Yes, exactly -- and, as a result, we're doing this to all of humanity. People don't need to be happy, we just need to produce more.

So, the future sucks; we've worked hard to automate everything people find joy in, and left the miserable parts of the job for people to do, and asshats like you insist we should be happy about it.

What's the point?

> Do you really want to spend your career

I want to add here: why do you imagine the outcome here will be dictated by what I, or any other individuals, want? There's this conceit that we can design how society is going to be rather than have to deal with what society becomes. The bandwidth for "societal engineering" is low.

there was already far more to learn than any genuis could understand in a hundred lifetimes. There is no nobility in simply increasing the amount of things that can be learned

So, why are we funding math then?

Why do people care about art?

several reasons. For some, because we think it might lead to useful results. For some, because we think the human pursuit of knowledge is worthwhile. For some, because we want to discover truths about logic and the universe. For some, because we are playing a status game (not just the mathematicians themselves but countries, universities, companies etc). For some, because we get personal fulfillment in understanding, and there being experts at something who can help others to understand.

For most, all of the above in various measure. To act as though one is the only thing thats important is wrong. The crisis is because the balance between these that existed is being shifted.