Mathematicians' open letter threatens student organizers' reputations to cancel Caltech Mathathon backed by $2M from Anthropic and OpenAI
ignite_intelligence · reddit · 2026-09-11
On September 10, mathematicians published an open letter demanding the cancellation of the Caltech Mathathon, a student-run hackathon where 100 teams would use frontier LLMs on open problems, backed by $2M in credits from Anthropic and OpenAI.
The letter's most controversial clause warns that because the mathematical community has no consensus on evaluating AI-generated results or dealing with AI companies, participating in an event tied so closely to Anthropic and OpenAI "could plausibly negatively impact the future reputations of participants."
The poster highlights the power asymmetry: the organizers are undergraduates, while the signatories are the very people who control those future reputations — his sarcastic take on what "math can't be replaced by AI" really means.
Related event: Hundreds of Mathematicians Sign Open Letter Against Caltech's AI Mathathon(9 posts)→
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