Even Sam “magic intelligence in the sky” Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and the poster child of the AI boom, has mixed feelings about the speed at which the technology is developing.

In an appearance earlier this week on Stripe cofounder John Collison’s podcast, called Cheeky Pint, Altman reclined in a pub booth, sipped IPA and Guinness, and eulogized the many experts whose careers are actively being upended by the rise of AI.

That sting has been felt especially keenly in recent weeks by mathematicians, after OpenAI controversially published its AI-assisted solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which had vexed the field for decades. Some mathematicians called foul, accusing the company of what amounted in their view to plagiarism.…