Proofs and Prompts

Notes from the common room

Picasso rephrased: AI is useless

Joachim von zur Gathen, Retired professor of computer science at the University of Bonn

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973): “Les ordinateurs sont inutiles. Ils ne savent que donner des réponses.” Cited in many places, but the source is unknown. Thus it may be fictitious.

But “AI is useless. It only knows how to give answers.” points to, in my opinion, one of the biggest steals inherent in the OpenAI post from 6 October 2026. Over the centuries, mathematicians have endeavoured to find and state open problems that can serve as guiding lights for future work. That post tackles many of them, but will AI ever furnish new ones that are as interesting as the old ones? What will work on math problems look like in the future?

Received 12 October 2026.

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7 responses to “Picasso rephrased: AI is useless”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I asked chatgpt to translate the picasso quote, as I do not speak french. It says: “Computers are useless. All they can do is give answers.”

    Reply
    1. Yemon Choi Avatar
      Yemon Choi

      FWIW: I am willing to be corrected by an idiomatic French speaker, but it seems to me that a more precise translation would be “Computers are useless. They only know how to give answers.”

      Reply
      1. Yemon Choi Avatar
        Yemon Choi

        I wrote this just reading the French quote, and I failed to notice that the author of the original post already provided a translation!

        Reply
        1. Anonymous from above Avatar
          Anonymous from above

          oh oops, I did the same!

          Reply
  2. Jon Avatar
    Jon

    Interesting to whom? My dog doesn’t take find much interest in group theory or dynamic systems. I remember back when ChatGPT first dropped, I and a friend of mine were discussing what would happen if AI truly exceeded human abilities and he said “It would probably ignore us and just sit around and ask itself shapes”.

    Reply
  3. classycloudfe751e4564 Avatar
    classycloudfe751e4564

    The French sentence has never been published as a direct Picasso quote. The English version, or versions, derive from an interview William Fifield conducted with Picasso, published in the magazine “Paris Review” 32. Here, on page 62, Fifield is wondering “what Picasso means when he says to me—perfectly straight-facedly—later of the enormous new mechanical brains or calculating machines: “But they are useless. They can only give you answers.” How easy and comforting to take these things for jokes—boutades!” (A “boutade” is a joke, a quip, wisecrack, or a witticism – just saying, so nobody has to ask ChatGPT for help.) The word “computer” does not appear, the “they” refers to “calculating machines.” The afterlife of this supposed quote is laid out nicely here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/05/computers-useless/

    However, more interesting than these quibbles about words would be a discussion about how Picasso’s fierce insistence on originality and creation might be used as a reminder of mathematics as an art versus the artefacts of AI.

    (Wulf Rehder)

    Reply
  4. Johnny Avatar
    Johnny

    Ok.

    Reply

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