Math community roasted: netizen jokes Terry Tao's AI backtrack would've been better said bluntly
ctjlewis · x · 2026-09-21
A viral quip imagines mathematician Terry Tao bluntly conceding "AI beat me to Navier-Stokes and my thousands of harmonic analysis papers were pointless in retrospect, but I'm the only one who understands them" — arguing that such an unvarnished take would have been a better 'backtrack' than his actual comments, mocking the math community's awkward posture toward AI's advance.
Related event: Terence Tao Calls to Slow Down AI: The Pace Is Insane and Unnecessary(13 posts)→
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