Po-Shen Loh on Terry Tao's blog: Why we still need human mathematicians in the AI era
stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-09-20
CMU mathematician Po-Shen Loh published a guest post, "Why Do We Need Human Mathematicians Anymore?", on Terence Tao's blog — the prose written entirely by Loh himself in vim, with only the webpage layout generated by Claude Code.
Key points:
- Starting from the axiom that humans should help humanity flourish, he argues AI creates ever more "control points" that experts must oversee — and since the same logic applies to every industry, there won't be enough people for all the jobs that need doing.
- Experts must keep doing research to retain the expertise needed to steer AI.
Context: math's existential crisis spiked after OpenAI announced a solution to the Millennium Prize variant of Navier-Stokes. The Leiden Declaration has 4,000+ signatories, Math and AI 7,000+, and an open letter opposing the Caltech Mathathon 2,000+, while a reasoned minority (including economist Tyler Cowen) argues mathematicians should adapt and cede control.
Related event: Po-Shen Loh on Terence Tao's Blog: Why We Still Need Human Mathematicians(4 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- The 'War of the Worlds' panic was likely anti-radio propaganda — and the same logic drives AI doomer media coverage — AlexTensor · 2026-09-20
- Sam Altman and Elon Musk banter over a Kardashev 3 civilization as the endgame — beffjezos · 2026-09-20
- Essay: task-executing AI assistants are the wedge in the race to agent-as-a-platform — SIGKITTEN · 2026-09-20
- Model solving Navier-Stokes burned tokens equal to 4,000 years of human thinking — Dr_Singularity · 2026-09-20
- 45 expert scientists stress-test AI reviewers against Nature-family peer reviews — windx0303 · 2026-09-20
- Anthropomorphizing AI is fine when trillions are spent making it human-like — AndyMasley · 2026-09-20