Steven Strogatz

I’m 67 years old. And maybe I’m using the concept of “rizz” incorrectly. I’ve heard my 24- and 26-year-old daughters use it, and I assumed it meant a kind of generalized charisma. What I was trying to say is that in the age of AI, mathematicians may need to lean into their unique human qualities -- their taste, their ability to make connections between different subjects or different parts of math, to find new applications, to persuade others that what they’re looking at is interesting. But I also mean something more personal. All the things you’ve gone through in your life, what you’ve sensed with your body, what you’ve felt emotionally -- what people nowadays call “lived experience” (a phrase I’m not fond of) -- combine to make you uniquely you. And that’s all part of your charisma. So are your speaking ability, your writing flair, even your grammatical mistakes, quirks, and idiosyncrasies. All those things that give a human touch may be in greater demand than ever. They’re all part of what I mean by “rizz.” And I mean all this in a purely intellectual sense, not a romantic one! I suspect this kind of "rizz" may become a more important quality for mathematicians than ever before, now that AI has become a great equalizer in technical problem-solving power.