Stanford's Omer Reingold: LLMs force math academia to renegotiate its implicit social contract
minilek · x · 2026-09-30
Stanford theoretical computer science professor Omer Reingold published a blog post confronting what happens to mathematics when models match or exceed humans in relevant skills. He argues the implicit social contract — society pays mathematicians for intellectual curiosity in exchange for training the next generation and useful knowledge — must now be renegotiated, and that the crisis stems not just from LLM power but from how rarely the field has had to articulate that contract. His conclusion: approach the renegotiation with humility rather than entitlement.
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