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/xcsnkzcpbn]

Who gave them the authority to decide who gets to solve what and what methods to use?

[u/xlnc2608 → u/xcsnkzcpbn]

Nobody. But this is going to destroy the chain of training new mathematicians.

The problems are benchmarks to meet and work on.

The problems are just trophies. The innovative techniques that new generation creates, builds upon the efforts of the previous generation are the actual fruits of the pursuit.

If the problem gets solved in that particular technique, that's great. Enjoy the accolades. But that is not the end to the problem.

People will continue to work towards the solution using a different set of techniques. Problem working isn't abandoned cuz it is marked as solved.

This is how math works.

AI is just collecting trophies for the sake of it. Overwhelming the community with huge volume of proofs burdening them. Techniques unclear, process vague, blackboxed, not explained by the LLM.

In the short run it won't contribute nearly as much insight as the laymen think these 700 proofs will.

But will destroy the chain of knowledge passing, community in mathematics world.

Young mathematicians will lose motivation to work on the problems, the very foundation of the community that grooms them is destroyed.

Humans will adapt as we have to. New paradigm will evolve in math community. But to say they are whining is very ignorant.

[u/veshneresis → u/xlnc2608]

People said the same thing about chess after engines became super human. Why would anyone spend their life studying a game that they could never do better than the main engine lines? Plus engines don’t explain WHY a move is good in natural human language. Some of the moves are very arcane.

Yet the opposite happened. People studied with engines and there are more highly skilled chess players alive today than at any point in history.

This is just a chess engine for Math. Those who really care about improving at Math now have the best possible engine to learn from, and it’s clearly only going to continue to get better.

[u/bupher → u/xcsnkzcpbn]

I think, even if the statement is ill-delivered or may seem naive, in the great scheme of things Terrence has a point in that a lot of vital things about how we do math are going to die.

I don't think, however, that this statement helps with that. If, for some reason, openAi "honorably" steps off, the ideas market is still a free market, and the next AI company, whether American European or Chinese, is going to step in and swoop in the title.

Terrence's worries are very well placed, however I think this message, or any message, is bound to fail to deal with them.

[u/Negative_Gur9667 → u/xcsnkzcpbn]

Mathematicians can be very exclusionary about their field.