Terence Tao on OpenAI's Navier-Stokes result: math automation may erode the field itself
jjvincent · x · 2026-09-09
Summarizing Terence Tao's thread on OpenAI's Navier-Stokes news: automation of math risks diminishing the discipline. The opacity of AI solutions removes hints toward promising future research directions, while fear of being "AI-sniped" stops researchers from sharing work. The effects vary by discipline, but the insight generalizes—what is lost when we teleport to an answer instead of following a path? At minimum, the ability to map the intermediary domain.
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