Why are we even doing all this?

Rikab Gambhir, writing as a theoretical particle physicist, confronts the recent wave of AI-generated mathematical and physical write-ups - citing OpenAI’s release of several hundred documents and related physics outputs - to argue that these systems produce superficially plausible but largely uninterpretable content. He invokes Borges’s Library of Babel to illustrate a future in which vast repositories contain every possible proof or theory, correct and incorrect alike, and notes that current AI practice increasingly offloads the hard work of verification and explanation onto the academic community. Specifics include probabilistic generation of “look‑right” papers, Lean certificates and other machine artifacts, and the assertion that removing the human-understanding bottleneck simply floods the literature with unreadable factoids.

The piece attacks prevailing academic incentives that prize rapid accumulation of potentially true claims over clarity, correctness, or beauty, portraying creativity and genuine understanding as inefficiencies to be outsourced to corporate models. Gambhir warns of career and cultural shifts - scientists diverted into finance, content production, or arguing with bots - while adopting a satirical, mordant tone that lampoons claims of AI triumph and the hollowing out of scholarship. He closes by urging readers to remember the original reasons for pursuing science and math, even as institutions race toward a Library of Babel no one will read.