The read was very interesting, and I think you're right, mathematicians are still very much needed, in some sense now more than ever.

But the effect is the same across other professions. We need mathematicians, we need professional grounding but we only "need" experts.

Every step AI takes feels like it slices people off the bottom of a profession, making them less relevant, while simultaneously increasing demand for the top.

the vicious cycle I see is it will "Eat the middle", you need people with juuust enough acumen in a subject to drive the AI, to set a goal and nudge to a direction, and you need a real expert to look at the results with a critical eye but you don't need the middle of the curve. I think over time this will depress hiring and wages of new people, and stunt their progress towards expertise by destroying the middle ground. Then when our current experts retire we'll be left in a lurch.