But I've seldom been in a situation where multiple jobs fit the three circles equally and I need to use a fourth circle ("What the world needs") to decide.
I also think a core tenet of Western culture is that the power to choose your own path (individualism) comes with the responsibility to benefit others (service). E.g., selling cigarettes to kids doesn't fit in the center of the three circles because one shouldn't enjoy that, even if one is good at it and can get paid for it.
Instead of asking, "What does society want me to do," we ask, "How can I make the world better."
It's not a given that mathematics will survive without mathematicians. It's not even likely. The proofs OpenAI threw over the wall are unpublishable garbage, top to bottom. A big reason mathematicians are so upset is that they feel like they've been drafted into the role of unpaid editor for OpenAI.
Make no mistake about it, the mathematical profession is under attack. The biggest incentive for becoming a mathematician (as opposed to a hired gun quant) is the challenge of solving the proofs. Take that away and the most talented problem solvers go with it.
In time, the profession of mathematics will evolve so a new task is at the center of the diagram--maybe it will be explaining math results to humans or teaching math to future mathematicians.
That is the centre of mathematics. It's what schools pay mathematicians to do. All the research stuff, the problem solving, the "thrill of the hunt" for elusive proofs, and the prestige of being the first? That's the carrot the schools dangle in front of mathematicians' noses to get them to work. Without that, you don't get exceptional mathematicians teaching classes and supervising grad students (and attracting the world's top students to your school); you get adjuncts and only adjuncts.
Example: "Basically the paper is so horribly written that it’s impossible to read it without AI help. I asked Astra for reasonable completeness and soundness claims of the noise gadget and it gave them by combining claims from all over the paper."
Without AI help? Impossible. With AI help? Comprehensible.
That is consistent with the assertion that mathematics might outlast human mathematicians.
(Feels related to models evolving forms of human-incomprehensible shorthand when communicating among themselves.)
Without making a value judgement of whether that's good or bad for the field in the long term, it is an interesting point to note the similarity with the human-incomprehensible communication among AI agents. When there are no humans in the loop, it's no longer necessary to translate or "lower" the representation for our benefit. Since it's still early days, we can only imagine and extrapolate how far it might go in that direction, what might evolve out of it in the future.
Incomprehensible pure mathematics has no value to anyone.
I think the "egoless" path is taking a 50,000-foot view of mathematics that ignores the above lens. Sure, mathematics will survive and even prosper with AI, but what about the mathematicians?
In time, the profession of mathematics will evolve so a new task is at the center of the diagram--maybe it will be explaining math results to humans or teaching math to future mathematicians. I don't know. But it's easy to see that not everyone is going to be happy with the transition, and many will be left behind.
For software engineering, it depends on what your center is. If you like "writing code", then #3 is under attack. But for those whose goal is, "make something work", all three are still viable and even better than before (or at least faster).
That's why we see so much disagreement on HN about whether AI is good or bad for software engineering.
I'm sure lots of other people have made this observation before.