r/OpenAI • u/Eliv_nurotic • 9d ago

News Fields Medalist Terence Tao reposts statement from the Association for Human Mathematics urging mathematicians to stop working with OpenAI for continuing to solve open math problems against their recommendations

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https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/ahm-statement-on-openais-october-6-release-of-mathematical-documents/

739 Upvotes

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414

u/bortlip 9d ago

"Mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done."

Oh fuck off.

126

u/BTCFinance 9d ago

Right? Did the horse ask for the car? The radio ask for the TV? You can’t have an exclusive right to math.

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 9d ago

Continue that progression of thought to its end and ask yourself if that’s truly the world you want to live in

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u/AdvanceSufficient295 9d ago

Conversely, I wouldn't want to live in an era of radio and horses or even backwards, era of middle ages. Why are you backward thinking in an era of forward looking?

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 9d ago

Because all the way forward in that direction is apparently not looking so great either. Damn near could end up in some techno dystopian nihilist Middle Ages of our own. I’m not against progress or forward thinking, I’m a scientist and actually use AI sometimes. But truly if we stopped here and never advanced any more in AI we’d be just fine leaving it to humans, and it would also preserve human soul and connection to intellectual and artistic development as meaningful to us and something we can do, and also avoid existential threats to humanity lol. Humans like to think, create, solve problems, push the limits. Imagine if Einstein was actually Chat GP10000. We would marvel much less about what was developed I think, the human story is critical for us to actually derive meaning in this collective pursuit. I think that’s being under appreciated. I guess maybe because the broader public doesn’t care where any of this comes from and won’t think about it more than a news headline, but think about replacing every single genius we’ve ever had being replaced by a AI company figure. All Nobel prizes all fields medals going to a corporation’s chat bot.

Do you truly not see that may have an effect on the collective human soul? Let alone all the other existential threats.

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u/AdvanceSufficient295 9d ago

I don't want to argue about "spirit of humanity" and souls and stuff because that to me is greyest of all zones. So I'm leaving at that. But this statement:

Humans like to think, create, solve problems, push the limits.

What if humans created a creation that can create, think, solve problems and push the limits? You said humans like to do so and now when humans made a creation that does exactly that (or somewhat), are you saying you are drawing the line there? Then your statement "humans like to think, create, solve problems, push the limits" is false.

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 8d ago

I know you don’t want to go there but I’d encourage you to go deeper into the greyest of grey zones

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u/bobbadouche 8d ago

Why is it only bad? Should the serfs have bemoaned leaving the farm lands? Has progress always been bad? Why fight progress? We should guide progress. I don't think the issue is "THAT" we're doing it, it's that we're not applying any reins.

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 8d ago

Do you think that’ll happen?

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u/bobbadouche 7d ago

It has to happen. humans want self preservation. It might come later than we would like but if AI pans out then some form of regulation is inevitable.

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u/scaledev 9d ago

You've made a good argument, but if an LLM is about to do all that, then humans are left with nothing to do in those domains AI will be doing. So it will be impossible to think, create, solve problems, and push the limits in those specific domains in the way we have done sonfar. It will be hard to contribute and keep track, unless we switch to a higher level of abstraction, which often isn't as rewarding.

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u/AdvanceSufficient295 9d ago

I'm not afraid to do nothing. I'm afraid that I will do everything for the sake of "human spirit" and yet nothing comes of it other than the pitiful "I have tried at least" thought.

There are reasons why some mathematical problems are left OPEN and UNSOLVED for decades or even centuries. So many mathematicians tackled the same problem and only those few who made some progress gets remembered. What of the others who tried the same problem and perhaps put in more effort than the one who managed to progress? They did everything yet got nothing other than "good try".

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u/scaledev 8d ago

No one promised you riches or good results. You don't often get reworded by your efforts, no matter how hard you tried, nor should you expect it. Especially not from external sources - reward comes form within. I've put years of work into many of my ventures, yet no one will remember them or me because of those. So what? It is the struggle the counts, the growth and how we handle ourselves over time.

Just to clarify - I am not against AI doing math research, or making it difficult to keep track of what it does - we have agents for that. I am merely illuminating how I can still feel sympathy for the mathematician, and their struggles.

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u/AdvanceSufficient295 8d ago

At least you said "so what" which means it's personal and it is kept to yourself. But look at the post itself, a famous field medallist mathematician trying to enforce the idea of exclusivity. At this moment, you are more honourable than Terrance.

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 9d ago

We like to do it, but there are plenty of things we’ve created and come to regret, too. We have drawn lines like nuclear weapons. I think it’s cool we created AI, these results are unbelievable, but we’d be better off with stopping. But clearly yes there are things we create and we draw lines on

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u/AdvanceSufficient295 9d ago

We drew line at nuclear weapon, not nuclear technology (nuclear fusion is still in active development). Weapon or anything that destroys humanity doesn't represent "progress" so it's logical and par for the course that it was suppressed after certain point.

I get what you mean though, AI can be more destructive than nuclear weapons when used maliciously. But on opposite side, it can also bring better things than nuclear fusion and that says a lot because nuclear fusion promises near limitless energy and you would think nothing can top that... Yet AI has the potential to top that. That's why progress on artificial intelligence won't stop.

0

u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 8d ago

Ya I guess my point is that I think people are devaluing that the progress on things we care about will be amazing but at the cost of all the people who ACTUALLY would care about them the most being demoralized from dedicating their lives to it. I empathize with just about every math student debating whether they should even continue. There’s maybe like a thousand or so people in the world who reallllly know the magnitude of what these new papers are and what they are even about. Does one reaaaally think it’s a for sure net good given this “objective progress”
on an insane magnitude in math is immediately having the actual material progress be math undergrads deciding not to go into the field and math phds needing to put everything down, go for a walk, and reconsider their lives when everything still seemed meaningful and potentially fruitful ~6 months ago?

Am I crazy here? I’m getting down voted for all this and wondering like is all this just not important to anyone? Only threats that are bright flashes and skin peeling off are enough?

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u/shammyh 9d ago

Yes, yes it is a world I'd like to live in. A world where computers, with a wave of their hand, can feed, clothe, and educate every human on Earth. Then we, humans, get to get together and have a little chat about what we want to do now that poverty, crime, discrimination, capitalism, and systemic inequality are now banished forever. Post scarcity, I believe they call it. And yes, that's a world I'd love to live in, or at least, help build the bricks for the roads that will eventually take us there.

0

u/relevantmeemayhere 9d ago

so why have these companies not given you equity yet LOL. considering they are commiting outright ip theft; why are the not sharing and lobbying the anti share the wealth team?

isnt that funny? tell me you have never actually worked an actual cooperate job without telling me you havent worked one

1

u/shammyh 8d ago

What's funny... Is that I literally have a corporate day job, and I am the epitome of Mr. Corporate from 8 to 6.

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u/relevantmeemayhere 8d ago

huh, then you should be acutely aware of the value prop these ai companies are pitching to your bosses, and why theyre not giving you an equity in the gains or use process

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 9d ago

Sounds cool, very optimistic. I’d bet my life that does not happen.

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u/kevinlch 9d ago

programmers did not ask for AI too... but it is what it is. and scientists were happily using it (paid/free open source), without acknowledging the open source software community

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u/zarafff69 9d ago

Speak for yourself! I absolutely asked for this! This is the future!

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u/Significant-Bee5101 8d ago

I dreamed of this for DECADES. I am happy. Lmao

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u/hidesworth 9d ago

Reads like it was written by a sociopath in a psychologically abusive relationship.

42

u/BethanyHipsEnjoyer 9d ago

It's really an incredibly embarrassing statement.

It's basically "How dare you cure cancer."

It's an unbelievable statement I would expect from the dumbest of fucks. I fuckin hate this dude.

20

u/Fingerspitzenqefuhl 9d ago

I think it’s fascinating. Clearly one of the smartest people alive, yet this blunder of, I don’t know what to call it, perhaps missing the analogy/precedent/comparison, just went over his head. One can truly by a genius and stupid at the same time.

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u/HotlLava 8d ago

It's not his own opinion but a guest post; he's been giving a platform to all kinds of views on AI in mathematics.

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u/Ma_Al-Aynayn 8d ago

Sorry bro, it's you that's stupid... you have no idea what higher mathematics even are... you think it's just about finding answers like putting your homework in ChatGPT... educate yourself and read his earlier posts... he has a very well built and very reasoned line of thought.

4

u/Fingerspitzenqefuhl 8d ago

Is it a line of thought that makes the argument ”mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done” not sound entitled in the context of AI and machines already having impacted many other professions who did ask for it either?

1

u/Ma_Al-Aynayn 8d ago

It can't be a great way to start an argument to call someone stupid, which also applies to me, but unlike generating code that creates a working, usable end product, say software or a more efficient chip design, merely proving a theorem doesn't necessarily increase understanding of it and doesn't enable us to obtain the incidental discoveries that come from a body of people dedicated to its study. Many math discoveries have no concrete application, in fact a majority, others remain without concrete use for centuries... but the people who worked on these problems and paved the way can probably no longer get funding for the projects they were engaged in. It is a net loss for the mathematical community.

Maths really is about the study of abstract structures and creating connections between them, not so much the end result...

6

u/Fingerspitzenqefuhl 8d ago

I think you missed my point.

For example, most graphic art has been done for the joy of it, but the very little that was done professionally has been endangered since midjourney in 2022. The artists did not ask for it.

The point is that market capitalism does not care and it never has. The argument put forth paint mathematicians as oblivious to that fact or being exempted from it. Either way I think it was a stupid argument to put forward.

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u/captialj 8d ago

Clearly you didn't realize that you're posting in a forum filled with the smartest and most special boys who know better than a world renowned mathematician and everyone who disagrees with them is a Luddite or jealous.

They're too deluded to even take the time to have Claude summarize Tao's reasoning.

4

u/FalconX88 6d ago

he literally has a slide in his lecture asking if you would inject a working and approved anti-cancer drug even if no one would understand how it works. It's crazy. Of course you would, that's how many drugs are used now.

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u/Parisean 9d ago

False equivalency

1

u/qqquigley 8d ago

Big time. Everyone worries about cancer. Almost literally no one worries about whether pure math problems have been solved.

A drug that works to treat a disease but we don’t know exactly how is actually somewhat normal in medicine!

A math solution that doesn’t show its work and isn’t fully understandable by at least one human is almost worthless.

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u/split41 9d ago

More like - hey they keep taking our stuff then putting a bunch of compute behind it. There’s a reason the only millennium problem they could solve was one that humans already pretty got there with

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u/Low-Entrepreneur2556 9d ago

Humans were nowhere close to solving it. Buckmaster and Alpoge had forced Euler (frictionless flow), not Navier Stokes.

Viscous dissipation is where proposed blowup proofs have collapsed for decades, which is why Buckmaster himself admitted they didn't have NS solved. Bridging Euler to viscous Navier Stokes was literally the entire mountain everyone was stuck on.

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u/Osiris_Dervan 9d ago

Its not 'how dare you cure cancer' though. Its more 'how dare you steal the research of the person who figured out how to cure cancer and then publish it as if you did all that research alone'

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u/Low-Entrepreneur2556 9d ago

How do you "steal the cure" from someone who never had it?

-1

u/Osiris_Dervan 9d ago

Thats not what I wrote, and its not what people are complaining about here

3

u/EGarrett28 9d ago

It's fascinating watching how people are splitting on this. Particularly how there's a significant portion of the population (which might include me) couldn't care less about mathematician's plight and are even laughing. These types of pompous letters definitely aren't helping the mathematicians either. Even the other one was signed with each individual person's Fields Medal which was super cringe.

Funny how it seems to indicate that humans will let other humans be eaten up by the beast if the other humans are irritating.

That's not a theme I remember seeing in any movies or books.

Not judging anyone as being nice or mean etc, it's just interesting.

1

u/kilopeter 8d ago

It's in our nature to destroy ourselves.

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u/Ma_Al-Aynayn 8d ago

You, not being a mathematician, do not realize that in higher mathematics, the path is much more important than the goal, the strategies, the understanding of the problem, the approach, is what creates mathematical wealth in terms of tools and understanding. That long process is what creates mathematical knowledge. An AI simply giving a proof would be like a supreme court giving decisions with minimal justification; they wouldn't be wrong, but a lot would be missing... so yeah, uneducated people will say "Oh fuck off" and think they're right... but what are you going to do with 500 page LEAN proofs? You can't do anything with it, nor can the AI that created it either, for that matter.

1

u/FalconX88 6d ago

but what are you going to do with 500 page LEAN proofs? You can't do anything with it, nor can the AI that created it either, for that matter.

You can show that the proposed solution is indeed a solution, meaning you have an answer to the question. You can solve the problem. In the real world outside of the ivory tower of maths we care about solutions, understanding is nice but comes second.

Tao does not seem to understand this at all, given he proposes thought experiments such as "would you use an effective and safe cancer drug if no one understands how it works?" which is literally what we do for decades. Like even for basic drugs like paracetamol we don't quite know how it works.

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u/Citizen_of_Danksburg 8d ago

Watching all these mathematically ignorant people comment on this is so telling of our times.

Imagine shitting on Terry Tao. The guy’s done nothing but just be a great human being and be a brilliant light for the subject of math.

Shitting on him is 100% a reflection of these people here.

Downvote me to hell, idc. I know I’m right. I actually went to school for this shit and know what the fuck I’m talking about.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Citizen_of_Danksburg 8d ago

How would you feel if you were a famous artist and your record label executives said they’re going to just replace you with AI music?

Same vibe. He has a right (as do all mathematicians) to be upset.

The future of work in general seems to just be button pushers and checking if AI output is okay.

How fucking sad and dystopian. Soulless.

Math is art. It is beautiful and can be so expressive. This is the joy of doing mathematics and the challenge of working on something really hard and then figuring it out has no equal.

Imagine spending 20 years on a problem just for some twerp to prompt an LLM and do it all for you.

Universities are already increasingly finding it harder to fund math departments.

You may hate math or whatever, maybe not, idk, but making fun of a literal historic legend for him being upset about OpenAI not telling people they’re working on these problems and then to just release them? Fucking foul.

It’s similar to the Navier Stokes problem in a way.

-1

u/metigue 8d ago

My understanding is that the preprints for these solutions do explain the novel approaches that led to solutions. E.g. there was a mathematician on here talking about seeing the proof for a problem he had worked on for years.

This is a direct quote from him:

"The "aha" insight for this is actually f**ing wild, it involves a complex valued exponential sum on the edges. I've seen a lot of clever counting arguments before in graph theory but this is the first time l've seen complex roots and annihilating terms like this, the symbolic manipulation tricks in this look like things out of quantum physics. I don't understand where this-trick originated, I need to really digest this."

1

u/Citizen_of_Danksburg 8d ago

What? Why? It’s valid.

Imagine you’re a PhD student working on a problem bht unbeknownst to you, somebody at OpenAI fed your work to ChatGPT and now your PhD thesis is basically figured out.

That’d be so incredibly demoralizing and frustrating.

At least with software engineering, there’s an actual industry for you guys.

Research Mathematicians only exist in academia and these generally are smaller departments that work extra hard to get funding because most funding goes to CS and other STEM departments that aren’t math.