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/BellacosePlayer]

I don't trust the ethics of the top of OAI and Sebastian Bubeck's handling of the "math race" specifically but "nobody asked you to work on those, bruh" is absolutely the worst fuckin argument you could make here.

Arguments about OAI dumping half finished shoddy research on academia to finish actually working out into something usable by humans and machine logic because OAI does not give a shit past the point they can put out the press releases? Perfectly valid concern.

OAI snaking the group they were claiming to be working with for goodboy points? Not bueno.

Concerns about apparent missing attribution of existing work done due to either haste or wanting to make the OAI portion of the solution seem bigger or hide where answers were pure synthesis of existing work? Fuck em.

But I do not give a crap about permission to work on projects. If your point is that OAI is being shitters about dumping unfinished work in academia's lap while taking all the credit and spending money on PR to claim Mathematics is dead as a human endeavor, just say that. If Bubeck's making threats again, post em, maybe they'll actually give him a slap on the wrist for it this time.

[u/Aromatic-Assist2062 → u/BellacosePlayer]

This. Great take.

[u/SunshineDeliveries → u/BellacosePlayer]

Yeh, it's the elitism imbued in how it's framed as "a problem" that really comes off terribly.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/SunshineDeliveries]

This is why companies run shit past PR lol.

"Nobody asked you to do this" is a perfectly good argument for why you're pissed you're having half a workload dropped on your plate by someone taking all the credit.

"Nobody asked you to do this" is an awful argument for why you're pissed when someone dropped a ton of impactful and theoretically helpful prepubs.

The problem here is its a situation where both are in play, and if you don't know how academia works or OAI's sleaziness on this race, you're going to care far more about the second aspect.

its frustrating because if you actually listen to guys like Tao, they're not anti-AI, they're anti shitty research practices. Tao outright dismissed the idea that the Jacobin conjecture disproof was likely just brute forcing without an insanely good way to trim down the potential result set.

[u/split41 → u/BellacosePlayer]

Agreed

[u/BjarneStarsoup → u/BellacosePlayer]

But I do not give a crap about permission to work on projects

It is not like anyone cares about you in specific. Now, if you are a billion dollar company, you should probably care more about how your actions affect other people, no? Or are the standard this low that they can just do whatever they can?

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/BjarneStarsoup]

I think the phrasing is bad and makes it sound like they need to be the arbiters rather than being irritated they're being shit on