But he is unbothered by what the chatbot can do, because he spotted what it still cannot do: brainstorm creative solutions to unfamiliar problems. And that was where human beings still had the edge.

“This is what the future is – that people need to be able to learn how to think, and then fortunately, ChatGPT comes along,” he said when he stopped in Hong Kong on a speaking tour that included Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou and Shenzhen.

US-born Loh is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but has gained international renown for his enthusiastic promotion of maths.

Aside from his research and teaching, he travels across the US and beyond on speaking tours which recently have focused on ChatGPT’s impact on maths, jobs and education.

While in Hong Kong, he spoke to students, teachers and parents at a local university, two primary schools, two private education centres and an entrepreneurship education centre affiliated with an American university.

His decade coaching US international maths Olympiad teams – producing winners four times – has allowed him to see what the subject could mean to teenagers.

“When I was the national coach, my objective was to get these kids who are really, really good at thinking about maths to end up doing something else that might not even be maths, but might have something that contributes to society,” he said.

Hong Kong universities relent to rise of ChatGPT, AI but keep eye out for cheats

Describing ChatGPT’s arrival as an incredible gift, he saw an opportunity to end students’ reliance on rote memorisation and solving problems in set ways, instead of exploring on their own.

“It might be out of date to think of a school system as a competition framework to go and see who wins because unfortunately, people who win that contest today have trouble getting jobs,” he said.

To encourage thinking and creativity among young students in his elite maths classes, he tried all kinds of unconventional methods.

There were no model answers. He took himself out of the classroom by having secondary students teach primary pupils, tackling complex questions that went beyond the usual syllabus.

He also hired professional actors to sit in on lessons and provide feedback. He even drew on improvisational comedy to create an encouraging environment in maths classes so that even the most timid students would push themselves and explore beyond what they already knew.

Using the “yes, and?” comedy technique, in which performers cannot refute or reject each other’s prompts, he aimed to eliminate dismissive responses and wrong answers in the classroom.

That forced students to consider suggestions beyond their own thinking and interact with others to create a solution out of the bizarre matrix of figures and shapes thrown at them.

Baidu CEO claims AI edge over ChatGPT: Imperial Chinese poetry

Mathematics, he said, would no longer be about showing students how to solve problems, but having them find their way out of unconventional problems they had never seen before.

In his classes and in his talks with students, Loh also emphasises the importance of reflecting on their sense of purpose, and not only on how to excel in maths.

As technology has begun to shatter conventional notions of success in life, he has favoured promoting a return to altruism.

Those who shared knowledge and helped others along the way to finding a mutual solution would fit his vision, whether in an online classroom or in the communities where they lived.

“If you just think, how can I be useful, you’ll always be useful because as long as there are people, there’s going to be someone who needs help,” he said.

And that, too, is something ChatGPT cannot do yet.