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)→
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