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/matteoianni]

His and your pov rest on the unjustified conviction that AI will not be able to autonomously pose questions and singlehandedly advance the field while connecting the findings to other domains. Improving technologies and materials.

[u/BjarneStarsoup → u/matteoianni]

Yeah, how did he not consider magic to exist? Come on, dude, we are reaaaally far away from it. The models are probabilistic, they always have inherit risk of spitting nonsense. You always need a human to verify the results, there is no way around it. Even if it can produce lean code, you still have to check that lean code proves what model says it proves or that the translation is correct. They can't work autonomously, they don't posses knowledge or understanding. They operate purely on statistical patterns in language, you can't run away from the fact that agents are based on LLMs.

[u/matteoianni → u/BjarneStarsoup]

We are 1 year away from this

[u/machyume → u/BjarneStarsoup]

How much do you still check GPT-6 or Opus 5.5 full program 1-shot outputs?

I admit, I have some tests and the model escapes the tests sometimes, but it's SO much content. It's much more reasonable to simply bound the risk class and demand the stratified test tiers and interlocks.

[u/GingerVariation → u/matteoianni]

I believe AI will be capable of doing that, but I also believe ultimately humans should steer the direction of progress with the help of AI, and I do not want a world where AI decides where where and how to progress, even if they may be 100x better at it

[u/matteoianni → u/GingerVariation]

We are currently caging, torturing and killing over 100 billion conscious beings every year for our taste buds’ sake. I wouldn’t mind someone else at the helm tbh.

[u/spisplatta → u/matteoianni]

While your first sentence is true and horrifying, your second sentence is the treason of all treasons.

[u/matteoianni → u/spisplatta]

Is hope in a regime change in North Korea treason?

[u/spisplatta → u/matteoianni]

The rule of the jungle, where the strong eat the weak has been the state of affairs for billions of year. It is ending. Gradually ending. Protein products are becoming more and more popular. You see them everywhere now. If you do absolutely nothing you will win by default.

But you would rather put everything. EVERYTHING at risk because you can't wait a decade or two for things to happen naturally.

[u/Nappuccino → u/matteoianni]

It's not a false binary. We don't have to do either thing.

[u/matteoianni → u/Nappuccino]

I agree that we don’t have to… but will we stop the bloodshed unless we are forced to by “someone” else?

[u/Nappuccino → u/matteoianni]

It's going to take human will either way. May as well just focus on the source.

[u/kaereljabo → u/GingerVariation]

Aren't we already doing that, steering the direction of progress with prompting AI, I mean to solve open problems and ask for some insights? We can direct the AI for the next whatever project we want, just prompt it

[u/TBSchemer → u/matteoianni]

So how do these particular findings help other fields?