Mathematician Steven Strogatz Cries Talking About AI's Math Breakthroughs
stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-09-13
Cornell mathematician and Big Math author Steven Strogatz broke into tears in a WIRED interview discussing recent AI-driven breakthroughs in mathematics, saying "the science is thrilling, but there's a lot of human unpleasantness going with it." He has now started an X thread trying to explain what moved him.
Context: OpenAI claimed it used tens of thousands of agents to solve a 90-year-old problem with a $1M prize (pending independent verification), but mathematician Tristan Buckmaster alleges OpenAI rushed ahead after learning of his work with Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge and tried to influence credit. Anthropic said Claude proved 29,500 small lemmas while formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem. Strogatz sees these ruptures as symptoms of corporate labs racing for headlines ahead of blockbuster IPOs, rapidly reshaping the field.
Related event: Mathematician Steven Strogatz Explains His Tears Over AI Math Breakthroughs(8 posts)→
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