If you're an idealist who wants to understand the world, then who obtained the knowledge wouldn't matter, and whether you were redundant or not wouldn't matter either.
Which world do we want to understand? There is an infinite world of uninteresting and irrelevant mathematical objects. The motivation for working on specific things is mostly, I think, external. So I guess that mathematicians are often motivated by solving problems that somebody else care about.
That could be subjective. Whatever world/thing you want to understand, if you're a scientist purely for the sake of science, it can't matter if AI or someone else can do it better. Of course, in reality, it's a continuum with the h-index maximizing lab emperor in the other end.
I agree it is subjective. I think it is possible to be motivated by solving problems rather than understanding of the world, without being just an h-index maximizer.
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