25 Fields Medalists including Terence Tao declare AI benchmark-chasing severely misaligned with mathematics
sytelus · x · 2026-09-12
- Terence Tao and 24 other Fields Medalists issued a joint declaration on Math and AI at mathandai.org, open for additional signatories.
- Core claim: LLMs can now solve major open problems, but AI companies' push to use math problems as benchmarks is detrimental to the science of mathematics — the goals of AI companies and the mathematical community are severely misaligned.
- Famous problems serve as landmarks; their value lies in community digestion of new ideas, textbook simplification, and eventual broad diffusion — a process at odds with benchmark-chasing. The authors frame this as part of broader alignment issues affecting science, creative professions, and society.
- The retweeter complains that no one who ever turned down a Fields Medal has signed.
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