today at 10:07 PM
I find this entirely self serving.
Terrence Tao was very supportive of AI and formalizing math with lean when it looked like it was giving âgeneralistsâ like him an edge over mathematicians too deep into one particular niche field.
But now that itâs letting everyone, including mathematicians who are perhaps too specialized, explore ideas and patterns from related math fields, heâs suddenly âon a war footingâ.
today at 10:22 PM
I don't think it is self-serving. Tao has stated plainly that he thought LLMs would go the route of assistants, like co-pilots. But what he feels now is that they are actually being engineered to be replacements. His claim is that the way OpenAI dropped these math results isn't "assisting" anyone, so we should all read between the lines.
Consider any man at his job, fighting the good fight. Your boss says "I've hired this man to assist you" and you are happy to finally have some help with your difficult task. Then one morning you come into work and see that the coming dayâs work was done overnight by this other fellow. And the realization sinks in, he isn't there to help you, he is there to replace you.
In this view his reaction seems totally expected. I expect many professionals, e.g. doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. will make this realization sooner or later. The companies are saying these tools will assist professionals, but in reality they are aiming to replace them.
today at 10:29 PM
> But what he feels now is that they are actually being engineered to be replacements
lol. lmao even.
I guess there is a first time for everything.
today at 10:14 PM
I think it's a bit of an unfair characterization, see this post for the nuances in how the math community approached the development:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50128468
today at 10:19 PM
entirely fair.
basically both sides now dislike that he flip flopped
its either you are anti-AI all the way or flexible and adaptive without making strong opinions that can be put on record.
most people are in the latter and its growing. math is solved.
today at 10:28 PM
> basically both sides now dislike that he flip flopped
No, the dumb thing is the idea that there are "sides".
> basically both sides now dislike that he flip flopped
Literally the only people with this opinion of Tao are internet forum warriors who have no expertise in the field and who's opinion of Tao don't matter in the slightest.
today at 10:32 PM
> who's opinion of Tao don't matter in the slightest.
Similarly, Tao being âon the warpathâ does not matter in the slightest when it comes to formalizing math and finding proofs to important unsolved problems with AI.
today at 10:48 PM
> Similarly, Tao being âon the warpathâ
Do you think that this is a quote from the article you just read?
I swear half the comments here are just from people reading dunks on r/singularity and x and getting real mad at strawmen.
today at 10:24 PM
I've never perceived him as 100% supportive. He has rather been open-minded about a new technology and exploring what it can do. Now it turns out it can destroy his field, so he's naturally against it (at least against the destruction, not necessarily against the technology)
today at 10:28 PM
I think âdestroy his fieldâ is âdestroy his method of being famous in the fieldâ.
Terrence Tao is famous because of solving problems better that most mathematicians because he has an uncanny ability to look across different math fields. AI gets everyone this ability for 20 to 200$ per month, eventually free.
Most mathematicians are happy to see interesting problems in their field being solved, and are looking to build on these to find more interesting problems.
today at 10:30 PM
Hm... I'm not a mathematician, but why would these new more interesting problems not be solvable in the same way by the same - or newer - models?
today at 10:33 PM
They will be, thatâs the point.
The point is to make the field progress by discovering new things!
Who gets credit for what and how credibility is assigned is going to be muddy for a while but thatâs the case whenever a bunch of new science happens in close sequence. History is full of math/science discoveries having debated and dubious provenance.
today at 10:36 PM
I can't see how the field can even exist - not to say progress - if any problem can be solved before a human can understand it. Looks like mathematics without mathematicians, "progressing" in the same way as paperclip optimizer progresses in its productivity.
today at 10:43 PM
Math doesnât exist to make mathematicians famous.
It provides deep insights into logic, computation, provides tools for us to understand the universe, establishes mind blowing relationships between seemingly unrelated things.
For example âhow much information can a black hole contain?â
today at 10:51 PM
> provides deep insights
To whom? If there are no humans in the field, there is no one to get the insight. Maybe you are right, and there is just a new type of a mathematician being born, but as an outsider I just can't see what they could look like, what will be left for humans to contribute
today at 10:20 PM
> But now that itâs letting everyone
Eh... That âeveryoneâ is a multi billion (trillion?) $ company paying top mathematicians specifically hired for generating math proofs.
today at 10:24 PM
No, pretty much every math PhD student and researcher is now using the AI+lean combo.
today at 11:10 PM
So as every high schooler. That doesnât mean much for actual results similar to what OpenAI âgeneratedâ, and doesnât quite explain the âwar footingâ, does it?
Weâve yet to see the democratizing fantasies in math field to materialize.
today at 9:54 PM
Has OpenAI shared any new interesting _problems_? I.e. do more than strip-mine mathematics, as said in the article, but said: "Here is a question I cannot answer, it's interesting for this and that reason, I believe it's true for this and that reason, it's beyond me though, have at it." Has that happened yet?
today at 10:24 PM
+1 Good to know Iâm not the only one!
This will be interesting to watch: Where will AI creating and solving problems in a loop lead to.
today at 10:00 PM
AFAIK it has not happened.
Considering that this is where the mathematician excels over machine wouldnât that only offer a new view from such a mathematician that âOpenAI has rapaciously stolen from mathematics that last dignity: of choosing worthy problemsâ? Perhaps with sufficient effort the community of mathematicians may yet forestall such an effort.
today at 10:07 PM
> wouldnât that only offer a new view from such a mathematician
Don't invent things to get mad about, please.
today at 10:18 PM
They steal from the commons! They add to the commons!
today at 10:15 PM
today at 10:21 PM
For me it just shows that modern math is not that important and mostly ego driven. If it was important, mathematicians would cherish the progress. I can't imagine bio researchers get mad that AI cured cancer.
today at 10:18 PM
today at 10:09 PM
the live video interview on numberphile comes without the New York Times' narrative filter
today at 10:19 PM
âThey tookâer jobs!â
Funny when itâs someone else eh?
Just learn a new trade Terry.
(I am kidding if it wasn't obvious)
today at 9:56 PM
> Much as one cannot unhear a movie spoiler or a crossword clue, one cannot explore a problem as profitably and richly once one is aware of an existing solution
Certainly, itâs like being made aware of cheat codes to video games: One doesnât enjoy the game as much after but surely knowing something is true means you can find many other things that come from the pathway to it now that you know itâs true. Lots of science and tech is like this where someone shows something is doable and then people find better ways to do it but until that person showed it was doable there was no progress.
> I am horrified by the many person-yearsâ of research, particularly by young mathematicians, âbeing casually disrupted or destroyed,â he wrote.
Thatâs what technology does. And he might be upset but weâre the ones paying for it and frankly, Iâm happier to have more questions answered than for fewer answered but in an artisanal fashion.
Most notable is the fact that the released facts are like âtreated wasteâ. But if the question was worth answering and the value is only in a good answer and not simply a correct answer, then the value has simply not been realized.
But that feels strange then that the value is in the good answer, not just a right answer and yet one finds oneself unable to go get the good answer because a correct answer exists.
The fact that any answers are made public at all is useful to us all. Thatâs free knowledge. Would it have been better if OpenAI had discovered this very achievable fact and not said anything? Surely the papers, post discovery would have spoken of the âhoardingâ of such âessential human knowledgeâ.
Overall, I find the thing unconvincing wholly.
today at 10:15 PM
> Iâm happier to have more questions answered than for fewer answered but in an artisanal fashion.
But the value in seeking mathematical answers was never in the answers themselves. It was in the things one discovers along the way, the questions asked, the tools developed. The artisanal fashion is the part that benefits non-mathematicians.
These AI proofs only serve as an I-told-you-so. They're not creating surrounding theory which can later turn out to have useful applications elsewhere.
today at 10:30 PM
> Iâm happier to have more questions answered than for fewer answered but in an artisanal fashion.
Given that this is pure mathematics we're talking about, for the most part: Why?
Perhaps you are a mathematician and so these questions are relevant to you, but for most of us, these questions and their answers will not make any tangible difference in our lives or society.
today at 10:10 PM
> Thatâs what technology does. And he might be upset but weâre the ones paying for it and frankly, Iâm happier to have more questions answered than for fewer answered but in an artisanal fashion.
Would you prefer if graph theory didn't exist but we could answer if you can pass all bridges in Königsberg, without going through same bridge twice?
Or if we could answer any question without knowing why? What about answering Hilbert without theory of Godel's Incompletness theorem? Or knowing Nth digit of Pi without calculus.
Because that's essentially what you're asking for. If you gave humans a Djinn that could answer perfectly any question, it would kill most of our endeavors. Because it's not a problem that was unsolved for years "It's just the thing Djinn already answered so why bother?" Even if one is extremely curious, and devote a chunk of their life answering it, others would not see value in that curiosity. Because a Djinn can answer it in a few minutes.
today at 10:44 PM
Is Terence Tao just another AI booster nowadays, by the sheer amount of PR generating posts? Reading HN one might think that there is only a single mathematician in the world left.
Case in point: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
today at 9:26 PM
I find it interesting that, several years ago when discussing AI, folks used to focus on how automation would first come for blue collar work. Things like driving being automated and truck drivers replaced. And then eventually on the horizon we would see things like this.
But we still have no self driving cars. Seems like the automation came by in the opposite direction. Perhaps driving will actually be the final thing automated.
today at 9:30 PM
> But we still have no self driving cars
While I agree with your statement overall, as someone who drives everyday in LA alongside Waymos without anyone inside of them I must disagree with this aspect of it.
today at 10:08 PM
A better formulation would be: we don't know if we have self-driving cars.
Because if it became fashionable for pedestrians to wear large green dresses with red balls, and everybody would wear that, we have no idea what the AI would do.
today at 9:52 PM
We still have no general self driving cars. What we have is a bunch of geofenced tests. While we are closer than ever, we are still seemingly a long way away from truck drivers being obsolete was foretold over 10 years ago now.
today at 9:56 PM
âGeneralâ would mean winter driving and Iâm not aware of any large-scale tests of things like icy conditions on hills.
Edit: nevermind. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/waymo-toronto-winter-self-d...
today at 9:35 PM
An LLM automating web developers with 99% success rate saves the company millions of dollars and allows them to launch products and features faster.
A truck or a car that has a 99% success rate would be the top threat to society and quickly rise to the leading cause of death under 30 if widely deployed.
today at 10:20 PM
â99% successâ is too vague to be especially meaningful in such different use cases.
99% successful web development where the 1% missing is security that and the company leaks its entire repository of user data every few months is not good.
99% successful car driving where 99% of 5-year periods have zero accidents per car is an order of magnitude safer than the average driver. (And gut feeling, I suspect approaching the tail-end of the safest drivers on the road.)
today at 10:19 PM
An LLM automating web developers basically puts the company out of business. Why would customers pay a developer when they can just build it themselves?
today at 10:12 PM
>quickly rise to the leading cause of death under 30 if widely deployed.
Wait, aren't human-driven cars already the leading cause of death under 30?
today at 9:56 PM
Examples?
today at 10:17 PM
the point was that 99% rate of success is good enough when failure means nothing, not so much when it means dead people.
today at 9:43 PM
Driving is heavily regulated, and there are a million interest groups lining up to sue to stop self-driving. Imagine all the people who make their money from car crashes, for example.
today at 9:51 PM
today at 9:55 PM
It seems fairer to say that the Waymo fleet has >4,000 driverless cars [1]. There is still a long way to go, but it's rising.
[1] https://pages.skybrian.com/2026/waymo-robotaxi-fleet/
today at 9:51 PM
The physical world is still more difficult and messy than discrete logic (theorems, software).
today at 10:21 PM
Yeah, as always in AI hard things are easy and easy things are hard. How many times have I heard condescending comments from programmers that radiologists are just about to be replaced by AI. And well, AI turned out to get kind of okayish at programming much faster than being acceptable at being radiologist.
today at 10:09 PM
> folks used to focus on how automation would first come for blue collar work
Developers are guilty of hubris and they are getting slapped back to reality.
today at 10:30 PM
Developers are guilty of making reasonable projections based on contemporary industry trends, and they're getting slapped by unexpected revolution in computer science.
today at 9:53 PM
> But we still have no self driving cars.
Do you live under a rock?
today at 10:01 PM
0 self driving cars in my country
today at 10:54 PM
There are no elephants in my country, they must not exist.
today at 9:56 PM
Uh, they arenât trustworthy and they arenât fully autonomous. So no, we indeed do not.
today at 9:32 PM
Driving is actually regulated.
Something I'm noticing a lot is that automation finds easy footholds in unregulated industries because there's no basis to push back on it. And there's a lot more tolerance for poor quality work in unregulated industries too.
today at 9:40 PM
I have a self driving Tesla, as do many others.
today at 9:45 PM
(Supervised)
today at 9:43 PM
Broadly speaking, this is proof that there will be no jobs coming after AI.
All past inventions have put some of the most miserable humans out of a job. Farming by hand is hard, so is copying books and don't even get me started on the dullness of making clothes by hand.
Driving all day isn't all that far off, though still much better than the above and definitely better than riding horses all day.
Telegraph operators? Hell no. Dude sitting in an elevator all day? No thanks.
It's always been from the other end. This time around, there's gonna be some 10-20 years of robot manufacturing, then a universal lifetime of robots fighting misaligned robots until enough paperclips have been manufactured.
Or you know, we block out the sun and live in caves or whatever you fancy.
today at 9:28 PM
> They âused math for what they needed, which was to evaluate their models,â
OAI first paper on the prize was a pretty shitty thing to do. But the rest of this looks like they are just mining the corpus and taking a brute force approach to do it.
Im going to say this again, the "pure math" academic types need to get a grip. Plenty of your peers got PHD's and happily made a fortune in finance, while screwing the world (See 2008 housing bubble) and none of you said a peep about that.
today at 9:55 PM
Plenty of welders made weaponry that killed babies and none of the famous DIY Youtubers spoke out against that either.
today at 10:28 PM
> Im going to say this again, the "pure math" academic types need to get a grip. Plenty of your peers got PHD's and happily made a fortune in finance, while screwing the world (See 2008 housing bubble) and none of you said a peep about that.
They call it the most populist post of all time.
today at 9:45 PM
TLDR: "I didn't understand this proof and there is no one to explain it to me"
today at 9:52 PM
The TLDR seems perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but it's a worthy thought: the situation where our best experts find new science to be inscrutable is close at hand, if not here now.
Humans have been guilty of burying things we don't understand for millenia. Will we continue to do so "because AI"?
today at 10:24 PM
Inscrutable through lack of effort communicating (OpenAI) is different from inscrutable because itâs high level hard to understand (Grothendieck).