Mathematician: Talking to Terence Tao felt like an oracle — now AI gives me the same experience
lpachter · x · 2026-10-11
The author recalls a coffee with Terence Tao: Tao took a question and within seconds elevated it to the stratosphere, like talking to a "math oracle."
He says he now gets the same feeling talking to AI. On which jobs are most susceptible to disruption, he notes math is being disrupted but so are translators, travel agents, customer service reps and programmers — joking that after a 1999 job talk in a math department he was asked "What is protein?"
Related event: Terence Tao's Math 2.0 Talk Sparks Debate Among Mathematicians(21 posts)→
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