Activities
Joint Math Meetings
January 8-11, 2025
Seattle, WA
Contributed Paper Session
POMSIGMAA is sponsoring a Special Session at JMM 2025 in Seattle on the Philosophy of Mathematics, with talks involving philosophical implications of AI especially welcome.
Session Description: POMSIGMAA’s Special Session on the Philosophy of Mathematics is open to a broad range of topics, but with talks relating to the nexus between artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mathematics (broadly construed) especially prioritized.
Possible topics in this area include aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, ontological and possibly pedagogical issues. Examples of specific topics might include:
- Can computing machines produce mathematical beauty and what are the implications for mathematical aesthetics as a human experience?
- How can AI inform or advance human understanding of mathematics as described, for example, in William Thurston’s “On Proof and Progress in Mathematics”?
- What is the role of mathematical truth in AI practice?
- Are AI systems able to generate new mathematical concepts or objects?
Talks on similar topics will be expecially welcome, but any talk on the philosophy of mathematics will be considered for the session.
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: Tuesday, September 10, 2024. To submit an abstract, go to https://meetings.ams.org/math/jmm2025/cfp.cgi and follow the instructions.
Organizers:
Steven M. Deckelman, University of Wisconsin-Stout
deckelmans@uwstout.edu,
Bonnie Gold, Monmouth University (Emerita)
bgold@monmouth.edu
POMSIGMAA guest lecture
Speaker: Rajesh Kasturirangan, Socratus Foundation
Title: The Design of Mathematics
Friday January 10, 2025, 5:45 p.m.-6:45 p.m.
Abstract: Mathematicians, like other white collar professionals, are watching developments in AI with a mixture of horror and excitement. We don't know if an AI will discover a five page proof of FLT, but this potential phase transition in the history of mathematics also gives us the room to re-imagine some foundational practices.
In particular, I argue that as design needs to be explicitly incorporated into mathematics as it starts becoming more of an engineering discipline aided by automation tools. Once we recognize the value of design in a future AI enabled mathematical world, we will acknowledge the value design brings to mathematics today, for design is how mathematics can incorporate cognition and philosophy in everyday practice.
This talk will illustrate these theoretical arguments with concrete examples of 'design thinking' applied to mathematical practice.