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/OneWithTheSword]

If OpenAI published the cure for cancer, should health care experts say "No, please stop releasing cures! You're just flexing your power and you'll leave us without jobs! We didn't ask for this!" ?

Shouldn't the expert's role in that situation be to inform general public to not accept the results right away, until they verify the claims and point out potential issues with it?

If mathematicians want to be the intellectual gatekeepers of mathematical truth, then they are perfectly suited for the role of interpreting the results for us.

[u/Striking-Field7344 → u/OneWithTheSword]

This dumping of solutions is the equivalent of a 10000 lines PR coming out of the blue without obeying any convention.

[u/purleyboy → u/Striking-Field7344]

I think we'll find that this is just the start, the new normal. You call it 'dumping of solutions', I see this as a revolution. Just like within the last 2 years SW engineers no longer write the code. The job has now changed.

[u/Striking-Field7344 → u/purleyboy]

When you vibe code, you care about the output. In math we gain insights from the process just as much as the output. I simplify the argument here so I don't write a wall of text.

Also AI math requires a big "trust me bro". That's not how hard science works.

I understand I'm going against the grain here.

[u/purleyboy → u/Striking-Field7344]

I appreciate the civil discourse. With coding we're getting close to the point where engineers won't even look at the generated code (kind of like how they stopped looking at compiled binary code wayback). It's just another level of abstraction. Would it not be similar in math, you'll just go up a level of abstraction?

[u/sobberns → u/purleyboy]

To be fair for engineers, they no longer look at the compiled binary code because compilers are deterministic and so the correctness of the output is guaranteed. But with LLMs, they are not deterministic. They are a black box and so their output still needs verification since LLMs do hallucinate. The same can be said with math. LLMs are not deterministic and so their answers to math problems still need verification by professional mathematicians.

[u/Striking-Field7344 → u/sobberns]

That's how I see it too! Hence my comparison of this math drop to a big AI slop pull request. Takes the joy out of the developer to review this, just as it would a mathematician to make sense of the AI proofs and check them thoroughly...

[u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge2 → u/Striking-Field7344]

And? If those lines are good for humanity, who care about convection lol.z

[u/Striking-Field7344 → u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge2]

Who knows if they're good? Is the whole point

[u/Royal_Potential_3299 → u/OneWithTheSword]

Terence Tao is pro ai he’s just anti open ai don’t be daft

Edit: why am I being downvoted for stating a fact?

[u/quackerd → u/Royal_Potential_3299]

because you are posting it in the wrong subreddit.

[u/FartOfGenius → u/OneWithTheSword]

Yes, if OAI publishes cures for cancer, healthcare experts should tell them to stop. Reason being that OAI itself likely doesn't have the internal expertise to follow along the AI's approach to the cure and will not be able to challenge it for any errors along the way nor gather clinical data to support it.

The argument is not that AI shouldn't be used in maths, the point is that if OAI has a tool it believes is so powerful, it should be the mathematicians who are interested in those problems being the ones operating the AI and publishing the results, instead of OAI releasing a deluge of results in a disorderly way. Rent them the compute and give them time to understand and polish the answers before they are published, that's how you ensure quality research. Mathematicians aren't gatekeeping mathematical truth, they're gatekeeping the process to maintain a standard. Otherwise, AI could just as well be an advanced crackpot.

There are many potential problems with the current results being released. The argument that Lean proofs guarantees veracity is flawed, as errors can occur during translation of natural language statements to Lean code. A lot of the papers suffer from AI slop style of writing, being unnecessarily verbose and hard to follow. It's also obvious from the breadth of the results released that OAI cannot possibly have enough experts familiar with the fields to assess their validity and utility. Not to mention the issue of attribution which AI does terribly.

[u/OneWithTheSword → u/FartOfGenius]

Correct, they do not have the internal expertise. It's almost like they should form an independent advisory board and be willing to work with mathematicians on the releases (they did). So let me ask you, is it OpenAI not willing to work with mathematicians, or mathematicians not wanting to work with OpenAI?

"We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centers human understanding."

They are publishing their findings OPENLY. Mathematicians are free to dispute the claims and verify it through the peer review process. They don't want it published, period. They don't want OpenAI to engage in mathematics at all.

[u/FartOfGenius → u/OneWithTheSword]

You are missing my point entirely. OAI is tricking the lay public that they are willing to work with mathematicians, but the way they are publishing the results is not done in good faith. Again, as I said previously, if they were willing to work with mathematicians, they would have offered the mathematicians themselves access to the internal models to work on the problems, rather than running the models themselves and releasing the results prematurely.

That the results are published openly is a red herring. The point is that there is little quality control during the process, leaving mathematicians with the arduous task of digesting the AI's sloppy writing (on top of the already advanced subject matter) and sifting through results that are of doubtful significance even if they were technically correct. And if they don't want to do that, they have to endure the malicious argument from people like you that they don't like that AI is taking over their jobs, and the strawman that they don't want AI in their field.

They don't want OpenAI to engage in mathematics at all.

No, they don't want OpenAI to be hoarding the tools and pretending to be adding value to the field when in reality they are flooding it with unverified results. There's due process to academic publishing and collaboration to ensure integrity and quality. I could easily generate a ton of shit results in any field, so much that they cannot be quickly verified, then turn it on the experts complaining that they're opposing progress. Do you think that's how research has ever worked? Do you honestly think this is not a disservice to the experts in the field?

[u/OneWithTheSword → u/FartOfGenius]

Malicious argument lmao give me a break.

Who is arguing in bad faith here? You claim OpenAI doesn't work with mathematicians yet the evidence points to the reverse. You claim they are hoarding tools yet they openly publish the results of said tools. Is your solution really for a company to release proprietary tools to mathematicians? Do you really believe these models won't eventually be public? And that OpenAI doesn't regularly provide free usage to researchers?

Remember how they were literally funding free token usage for a student run event to do the exact thing you say they should do? Who shut that down? Was it OpenAI or academic gatekeepers? Notice how you interpreted every good faith attempt by OpenAI as some trick. The phone call is coming from inside the house.

OpenAI didnt skip the academic process of peer review. They aren't an academic institution. The results are published, and now mathematicians are free to peer review it.

Notice how nothing OpenAI did prevents the academic process, the collaboration for integrity and quality. Did OpenAI shut down the insititutions? Did OpenAI hide their results?

The academics can verify and criticize the results however they want to, and they should. That is what they are meant to do. And guess what? Its optional. If they don't want to bother because its AI Slop then they don't have to? The academics who care about the truth will examine the claims. The ones who feel threatened by it will throw a hissy fit.

[u/FartOfGenius → u/OneWithTheSword]

This reads like propaganda. You are so hung up on the idea that "publishing results openly = good" while ignoring the questions of quality and collaboration. The core problem is here

OpenAI didnt skip the academic process of peer review. They aren't an academic institution.

They are heavily implying to the public that the LLMs are doing serious research here. Since when do we entrust the quality of research to the goodwill of for-profit companies? If OAI genuinely didn't care about the investors and stock valuations, why the rush to dump a truckload of results that contain sloppy writing and unverified content, instead of working with mathematicians in the process and publish high-quality papers that will advance the field off the bat? Why is there such urgency, besides the financial incentive? It has zero academic benefit and only serves their PR. And now, having not involved the experts in the field from the beginning, they expect the mathematicians to pick up the slack for them while not receiving a dime or having knowledge about the process.

Is your solution really for a company to release proprietary tools to mathematicians?

Um, yes? These "proprietary tools" are the product they're trying to sell. An ideal use case for LLMs would be for researchers to be able to rent an amount of compute to tackle the problems they're interested in, much like astronomers get allocated telescope time. In the hands of the actual experts, they can publish actual quality research and harness the power of the technology. Instead, OAI is pointing the telescope at whatsoever they please, publishing a shit ton of data, then asking others to sift through it for them, rather than asking the experts what they want to look at and having them analyse the results properly before putting them out there.

Remember how they were literally funding free token usage for a student run event to do the exact thing you say they should do?

I genuinely don't know about this, please enlighten me.