I am going insane. In the last week LLMs have produced several counterexamples to long‑standing conjectures, and mathematicians are scrambling to keep their craft alive. I do not speak for everyone, but the emotional core of the issue remains stark: the loss of the human act of discovery.

The Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics feels like a muffled scream, a self‑soothing toast that masks an absence. Even if AI can produce beautiful, elegant proofs, mathematicians will still have a place in appraisal, presentation, and understanding. Yet the financial reality is bleak: we are paid to prove theorems, not to curate an endless stream of AI‑generated results.

Mathematics has long been a portal to the ineffable, with figures such as Ramanujan, Grothendieck, Cantor, Pascal, Luzin, and Leibniz illustrating the spiritual quality of creation. The Dinitz‑Garg‑Goemans counterexample, ADC 100, and the idea of 100 beautiful proofs highlight how AI threatens to erase the joy of original insight.

I fear that the human spirit of exploration will be excised, leaving us mere spectators. The question remains: can we preserve the soul of mathematics in an AI‑driven world?