Terence Tao and 24 Fields Medalists sign letter warning AI labs are damaging mathematics
ns123abc · x · 2026-09-12
Terence Tao and 24 other Fields Medalists signed an open letter warning AI companies are damaging mathematics. The letter calls it "a general threat to intellectual work," criticizing labs for treating math problems like brute-forced benchmarks: solutions rushed out without proper writeups or citations, raising severe attribution and plagiarism concerns.
The signers appear to reference OpenAI specifically, including an alleged offer to put a professor's name on a Navier-Stokes proof on condition he drop a coauthor who works at Anthropic. "The most precious resources of our profession are students and ideas" — while for labs, the letter implies, it's GPUs.
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