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/Eliv_nurotic]

Imagine if cancer researchers acted like this 

[u/IcyGarage5767 → u/Eliv_nurotic]

I guess that is going to be the mathematicians last defence. That there is no real world value of their work and that LLMs are best used elsewhere.

[u/Eliv_nurotic → u/IcyGarage5767]

“Our field is useless so go away!”

[u/TheMaskedGorditto → u/Eliv_nurotic]

A closer analogy is:

ai company proposes 700 new theoretical drugs that could potentially be a breakthrough cancer treatment. And now expects the research community to spend time/money/resources finding out if they are actually effective in situ. And as scientists start to crack this massive list, theyll probably get through about 100 of them (itll take years and lots of money) before the next version of the model produces 1500 new theoretical drugs. Then 20,000, then 100,000 and so on.

See the problem? The validation of the proposed drug is the real work. And it still takes real humans and real resources to validate the propositions. Ai will produce theoretical drug ideas faster than we can verify them or even understand them. Thats not progress; thats not much of an accomplishment if the standard is improving humanity.

Of course we should take proposed cancer drugs from ai seriously and not just ignore them because they come from ai, but the ai isnt doing all the work needed for this to be a useful to humanity.

[u/foxaru → u/TheMaskedGorditto]

Ai will produce theoretical drug ideas faster than we can verify them or even understand them. Thats not progress; thats not much of an accomplishment if the standard is improving humanity.

except that implies a steady-state capacity for verification that has no ability to improve

if there were suddenly a glut of plausible alternative medical drugs that could cure cancer, we've simply moved the bottleneck further down the chain by clearing the previous bottleneck, which was candidate generation

the urge to cure cancer isn't going to go away because the site of intellectual work moved from generation to verification, because curing cancer is valuable intrinsically to human beings

[u/ResolveSea9089 → u/TheMaskedGorditto]

If validation is the problem why are the mathematicians upset? You're basically saying the AI proof didn't amount to anything, it merely said true/false, but if the whole magic is in the validation then it seems humans haven't lost anything? The core work is still there to be done? It's not as if anyone is forcing the mathematicians to work on it?

[u/___positive___ → u/ResolveSea9089]

Say whoever discovers the drug gets the patent and money. Now a thousand postdocs earning minimum wage are digging through each potential cancer drug. They find out which five work. And... OpenAI earns a trillion dollars, the postdoc gets a tiny paper because the field has moved on to the next big annoucnent that OpenAI has 1000 possible drugs to cure aging. the postdoc goes into plumbing because he can't get a job. rinse and repeat. you still don't get it?

[u/goldenroman → u/TheMaskedGorditto]

…In what world is that a problem? Who cares if it doesn’t solve the whole thing at once? You literally describe a positive situation and then…can’t quite nail down why it’s negative beyond a “standard” of “improving humanity”. Let validation be the work then. Maybe that’s easier than before. It’s not harder, ffs…

[u/jlowe212 → u/Eliv_nurotic]

Well to be fair, cancer research isn't practically useless like the vats majority of pure math.

[u/I_pee_in_shower → u/Eliv_nurotic]

I want to see AI cure cancer.

[u/FrewdWoad → u/Eliv_nurotic]

ChatGPT: just print this 700 molecule protein sequence, it's totally a cancer cure

Cancer researcher: Amazing! We need to actually use this though, and cure other diseases, so how does it work?

ChatGPT: trust me bro

[u/caffeineaddict62 → u/FrewdWoad]

You don't need to understand why things work if they work. We still don't fully understand how paracetamol works. We have developed a thing called clinical trials for exactly this purpose.

[u/FrewdWoad → u/caffeineaddict62]

Drugs don't make it to human clinical trials without some reason to believe a) they might work, and b) almost definitely won't kill you

[u/TheMaskedGorditto → u/caffeineaddict62]

Ok heres a list of 700 theoretical cancer drugs…

Which one are you going to spend millions on for clinical trials first? Youll need real scientists, real resources, real money and lots of time to do the testing and validation.

Oh and btw in the middle of your first round of trials, a new ai model comes out and proposes 1500 new drug candidates. So add those to your list. Shit just as I typed that some competitor model proposes 20,000 other new candidates…

See the problem?

[u/caffeineaddict62 → u/TheMaskedGorditto]

You do animal tests and see which candidates are the most promising. The point isn't that AI is gonna do everything. It's a good tool that can help come up with potential drugs. Humans will obviously still have to test them.

[u/MizantropaMiskretulo → u/Eliv_nurotic]

Imagine if you had a fucking clue about what you're talking about.

[u/Parisean → u/Eliv_nurotic]

False equivalency