Guest post on Terence Tao's blog: how AI does, and does not, change how I do math
stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-10-04
Terence Tao's blog features a guest post by mathematician Rachel Webb, "How AI does, and does not, change the way I do math." Webb uses writing as a proxy for doing research: research is fundamentally a search for something interesting to say, with clarity and correctness as a second-order requirement. She frames AI as a machine that immensely speeds up research, likening it to taking the interstate instead of side roads — faster, but with tradeoffs, and the researcher still chooses which route to take on each leg of the journey. Tao notes the post itself was converted between file formats using AI, consistent with his pragmatic stance on AI-assisted work.
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