What's the Point? AI, Mathematics and the Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

The joy of Maths

Mathematicians love puzzles. For most of them, mathematics is a calling. They live for the eureka moment, the elegant proof, the breakthrough after months of being stuck.

In this week's episode of the New York Times podcast The Daily, host Rachel Abrams spoke with Cornell University mathematician Steven Strogatz about what happens when that calling and joy is snatched away. AI systems are now solving mathematics problems that have defeated brilliant minds for centuries: some with surprising elegance. The shock has rippled right through the mathematics academy.

Strogatz's word for the mood among his colleagues was "discombobulated". Many are moving through something like the stages of grief. Some scholars, who devoted their lives to searching for these sollutions have had their purpose snatched away. After vacuuming up all the world's research, these AI machines have synthesised the learnings and adapted them on a superhuman scale and speed.

Strogatz told a moving story about a town hall meeting he recently held at Cornell University where a student stood up and asked the question underneath it all: "What's the point if AI can do math better than any human being?"

The crisis beneath the crisis

Most conversations about AI focus on jobs. But Strogatz pointed to something deeper. Mathematicians are having a crisis of purpose and identity.

As early as the ancient Greeks, mathematics has told the heroic story of a human mind meeting an uncrackable mystery and, through brilliance and perseverance, conquering it. But when a machine solves an ancient problem in an afternoon, that story ends. The hero is no longer us.

If our meaning came from being the one who solves it, what is left when we are no longer needed?

This is not just an issue for mathematicians. Strogatz called mathematics the canary in the coal mine. What is happening there is coming to journalism, poetry, music (see Rick Beato's rant), medicine and much more. Sooner or later, many of us will face the student's question in our own work. What gives my work meaning if a machine can do it better? I've even talked to people who are treating their chatbots as a Christian mentor!

Chasing the wind

Searching for an answer, Strogatz remembered the song Turn! Turn! Turn ! which led him to the book of Ecclesiastes. He had never read the book before, but thought he'd see what it offered.

He discovered the teacher's existential crisis: "Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." The Hebrew word is hevel. It means vapour, breath, mist. Something real but fleeting, impossible to hold. Our achievements are like that. They do not give us control or secure a lasting legacy.

As we explored in our recent sermon series, the teacher tested this for himself. He built, planted, gathered and achieved more than anyone. Then he surveyed it all and found it was "a chasing after the wind" (2:11).

He also saw that life does not reward the gifted the way we expect. "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant... but time and chance happen to them all" (9:11).

Strogatz discovered that Ecclesiastes had exposed the weakness in the hero narrative long before AI came along.

Beautiful in its time

The interview with Strogatz became quite moving when he explained the hope and beauty in Ecclesiastes : "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart" (3:11).

He found comfort in this. Strogatz realised the truth that our lives are brief, and that brevity is part of its beauty. Value comes from receiving each moment as a special gift and living it fully.

Again and again, the Teacher returns to simple goods. "A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God" (2:24). Eat your food with gladness. Enjoy life with the one you love. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might (9:7-10).

The joy of solving a problem was never really about beating everyone else to it. It was the delight of the work itself, received as a gift. A machine cannot take that from us.

Back to what matters

In tears, Strogatz concluded that the rise of AI strips away our pride. It turns our attention back to what truly matters: love, creativity, relationships, and the life we share before we return to dust.

That is a wise conclusion. It is where Ecclesiastes points. "All come from dust, and to dust all return" (3:20). The book ends by naming our true purpose: "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind" (12:13).

Christians can say more than the writer of Ecclesiastes. The Teacher looks at life "under the sun". He knows eternity is set in our hearts, yet he cannot see how the story ends. We have been shown. In Jesus, God entered our brief, dusty life. He died and was raised, and in him our labour is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

We're not going to be able to do much about the rapid ascent of AI. There may come a day when your and my passions are done more skillfully than a machine. While that's a sad tragedy, let's also remember that our ultimate worth is given by the God who made us, loves us and calls us his own.

For us, here and now

Many of us will feel this shift in our work over the coming years. Some already do. When the question "what's the point?" comes, Ecclesiastes gives us somewhere to stand.

You are loved because you are made in the image of God, not because you are the best at something. You were made for relationship with him and with one another. That will still be true when the machines get smarter.

So enjoy your work as a gift. Treasure the people around you. Share a meal. Make something. Worship. And hold it all with open hands, trusting the One who makes everything beautiful in its time.