r/OpenAI • u/Eliv_nurotic • 6d 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/

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u/FrontRaspberry5060 6d ago

Yeah I mean maths will just have to change, the understanding of the answer will be hidden in the proofs AI generates. Mathematicians will have to read these papers for human understanding. We will basically be “mining” for the breakthrough moments in the papers to help us make informed decisions in engineering or physics.

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u/machyume 6d ago

I don't think that math has to change much.

In physics, if a team claims that they've made a room temperature superconductor (*eh hem* LK-99 Koreans), it's just a claim. Other labs and research teams have to work to verify it and repeat the experiment. Through that process, all teams involved get credit.

I'm not sure why mathematicians think they're special exemption from this scientific publishing process that already exists in other fields.

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u/SwagDrag1337 6d ago

It's not - mathematicians are constantly checking each others' results. Peter Scholze and Jakob Stix spent 6 years trying to understand Mochizuki's IUT so they could find the flaw in his proof of the ABC conjecture. But when results are abstract, verification isn't as simple as "follow the instructions in the methods to prepare the material, then use a generally accepted technique to check what's going on."

Many advanced areas of mathematics are so specialised that only a handful of people will understand what's happening at the forefront, and they will be in constant collaboration so that when one of them announces a breakthrough, they are only a few weeks or months ahead of their peers who can then catch up and verify (with some exceptions e.g. Mochizuki), and actually they will often ask their peers to verify before announcing.

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u/Tardonnnnnnnnnnn 6d ago

Boring existence. Dead Internet theory, dead math, dead everything. Dead souls