Mathematicians Issue Declaration: AI Solving Open Problems as Benchmarks Harms Mathematics
Thom_Wolf · x · 2026-09-12
The mathematical community published a "Math and AI" declaration (amplified by Thom Wolf) arguing that while LLMs can now solve major open problems, AI companies using them as benchmarks is detrimental to mathematics — the goals of AI companies and mathematicians are severely misaligned, part of a broader alignment issue for science and society.
Core argument: famous problems serve as lighthouses; their value lies in the new insights and methods they generate, refined through years of community discussion into textbooks. Models riffling to solutions strip out that process.
Wolf's pithy take: AI solving these problems yields 1 bit of signal while killing the 99 other bits of conceptual understanding mathematicians would have extracted from wrestling with them.
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