Terry Tao mocked for AI shift, DeepMind's Charton says it's unfair to him
f_charton · x · 2026-09-20
DeepMind researcher François Charton argues the community's mockery of Terence Tao is unfair: Tao tried to hold a middle ground — understanding AI without caving to hype, proposing ideas like SAIR for doing math in the AI era, and refusing big checks and cheap spotlight. Others counter that what's amusing is how quickly he went from spearheading AI-for-math to suddenly being concerned. Charton adds the community has far worse Quislings.
Related event: Math Community Mocks Tao's Pivot; Charton and Fleuret Defend Him(5 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Agents' bottleneck isn't intelligence but goal commitment — and that's good for alignment — mimi10v3 · 2026-11-12
- Google Cloud survey: 78% say legacy enterprise vendors may not lead the AI era — rseroter · 2026-11-12
- Safety researchers blast OpenAI/Anthropic plan: automating alignment research with possibly misaligned AI — trevposts · 2026-11-12
- NYT essay: resisting Big Tech and AI takes collective action, not willpower — TuhinChakr · 2026-11-12
- Ethan Mollick: 'talk to your documents' RAG solutions already feel dated — emollick · 2026-11-12
- Anthropic's pitch hasn't changed in 5 years: 'AI is winner-take-all, we will build god' — menhguin · 2026-11-12