You're exactly right. The ill-informed commenters here seem to think everything is about 'AI' and 'tech'. Of course you don't need a PhD to publish bullshit experiments on language models and unwarranted pontification — but try becoming a serious pure mathematician without a PhD.

But I guess the retort of the average tech bro HNer will be something like: 'we don't need pure mathematicians — just learn Rust and you'll make way more money'.