Mathematician pushes back on Tao: what counts as "prematurely" reaching lighthouses?
lpachter · x · 2026-10-11
UCLA professor Lior Pachter pushed back on Terence Tao's AI math talk:
- On Tao's claim that AI reaching lighthouses "prematurely" sterilizes the surrounding field, he asks the obvious mathematician's question: what counts as "prematurely"? Should the quadratic reciprocity lighthouse have been left for 200 years so he could have the chance to reach it?
- He calls the cancer slide "ridiculous" and notes that not a single committee formed around math and AI has a mathematical biologist on it — naivety that is "astounding (but unsurprising)."
Related event: Terence Tao's Math 2.0 Talk Sparks Debate Among Mathematicians(22 posts)→
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