Mathematician Kevin Buzzard: math community is 'grieving' through five stages over AI

littmath · x · 2026-10-02

In a long Xena Project blog post, mathematician Kevin Buzzard argues that AI for mathematics is undergoing a transformation unlike anything the field has seen, with language models now solving hard problems humans could not. While he is personally "extremely excited," many colleagues are upset, and he maps their reactions onto Kübler-Ross's five stages of grief. Examples of "denial" include the Association for Human Mathematics, whose members pledge not to publish AI-generated outputs and can take an "AI-free" option renouncing AI in research entirely. He also references Anthropic recently beating him to formalizing FLT. Reposter Constantin Kogl calls himself an overall AI optimist.

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