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.
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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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