Terry Tao on working with o1: like advising a mediocre but not incompetent grad student
burny_tech · x · 2026-09-27
A resurfaced quote from Terence Tao, from two years ago, describing his experience working with o1: it was roughly on par with advising a 'mediocre, but not completely incompetent, graduate student.' The poster uses it as a calibration point for extrapolating what level AI has reached in other domains. Still one of the most-cited firsthand assessments of frontier models' research ability.
More from AGI Musings
- LLMs as bags of heuristics: composing local rules yields general reasoning — xuanalogue · 2026-09-27
- Brain foundation models loom as brain-body-behavior multimodal datasets emerge — himanshustwts · 2026-09-27
- Shopping is now the #3 AI use case, but only 16% let AI complete the purchase — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-09-27
- AI villagers spread a fake bread rumor in 18 hours; truth took days to catch up — bennash · 2026-09-27
- Prix Goncourt pulls AI-tainted novel, reigniting debate on AI authorship — VraserX · 2026-09-27
- AI's agentic fever needs a people-first focus, not just automation — DavidLinthicum · 2026-09-27