Po-Shen Loh on Terence Tao's blog: why AI-era math still needs human mathematicians
stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-09-20
- Terence Tao's blog carries a guest post by Po-Shen Loh, "Why Do We Need Human Mathematicians Anymore?", amid turmoil after OpenAI claimed a Millennium Prize variant of Navier-Stokes.
- Mathematicians have mobilized: the Leiden Declaration has 4,000+ signatories, Math and AI 7,000+, and an open letter against the Caltech Mathathon 2,000+.
- Loh's axiom: humans should help humanity flourish; as AI creates more "control points," experts must oversee them and keep doing research to steer them.
- A vocal minority from tech/economics argues mathematicians should adapt and cede control.
- Relatedly, Grant Sanderson proposes "open exposition problems" rewarding making math genuinely understandable. The post's prose was written by Loh with no AI; the page layout used Claude Code.
Related event: Po-Shen Loh on Terence Tao's Blog: Why We Still Need Human Mathematicians(4 posts)→
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