Is AI the End of Mathematics, or Its Most Exciting New Beginning?

Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff · Aug 20, 2026 · 1h 18m

What does it feel like to watch an AI solve a problem in a single prompt that you've spent years working on, and produce a stronger result than your own published papers?

Professor Kotlikoff grew up academically alongside two economists, Yuri Dadush and Michael Pomerleano, who were his classmates when he began his PhD at Harvard in 1973. In this episode, he sits down with their sons: Daniel Dadush, a professor of mathematics and optimization at Utrecht University, and Daniel Pomerleano, a professor of pure mathematics at UMass Boston, both of whom are watching AI upend their fields in real…