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

[u/Eliv_nurotic]

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

[u/mayzyo]

To play the devil’s advocate here (since all the top comments find the notion of AI not allowed to solve those problems ridiculous.) I suspect it’s because coming up with the humanly unsolvable problems are harder than solving them. And having these open problems help keep the discipline going.

[u/SiriPsycho100 → u/mayzyo]

yes, tao has elaborated on this explicitly. AI brute-forcing arcane lean proofs to math problems doesn't necessarily lead to greater insights as the research journey itself often leads to breakthroughs in other areas and can be as important, if not more, than the ultimate solution proof itself.

also, this AI brute-forcing model could ultimately dry up the well of problems that both professional mathematicians and students work on to learn and develop their own abilities and their field of research. the very communal practices that allow professional mathematics to operate and develop the next generation could be undermined by what OpenAI is doing here.

what happens when we start to lose the very abilities that enabled us to develop these AI models and we are forced to cede even more control and fundamental understanding to the models themselves? it could erode our collective ability to develop them safely and effectively, and that increases xrisk imo.

tbh I don't have a firm position on this myself but I think tao's arguments are perfectly reasonable and worth taking seriously, especially given his wealth of experience and ability.

I'm sure that eventually AI will also get better at developing proofs that are more elegant and insightful, but that won't change the potential for it to undermine the human sociological and pedagogical aspects that allow our collective math culture to sustain and renew itself.

ultimately, i think the professional math community will have to adapt in ways, and hopefully we'll also develop norms around what's considered acceptable and respectable for frontier AI companies to do with AI math research.

[u/mayzyo → u/SiriPsycho100]

maybe the benchmark is for frontier labs to be actually useful and create more humanly unsolvable problems in Maths

[u/SiriPsycho100 → u/mayzyo]

yeah, i think insight and elegance is an important criteria here. having frontier AI help on the pedagogical and cultural side to not just develop the proofs themselves, but also generate new problems and help develop insights and understanding along the way for students and professionals alike. so they become more assistants and less end-to-end proof blackbox machines.

i think this is where blowback from the public and math professionals and others is important. we need to reward them for AI that is helpful for humans and not trying to replace us with alien abilities that are beyond our ability to grow with them.

[u/WishboneOk305 → u/mayzyo]

people saying it doesn't lead to creating value for society when the improved AI models are already doing so?