Terence Tao: AI Made Proofs Cheap, the Real Bottleneck Is Imagination
burny_tech · x · 2026-10-12
Mathematician Terence Tao argues that AI has made proofs cheap, so mathematicians' roles must shift. He outlines five directions:
- Build libraries like Mathlib
- Use AI to discover new methods, not just proofs
- Strip a theorem down to see if it still stands and explore what's adjacent
- Write texts that tie results together
- Study where AI fails
His conclusion: the real bottleneck is now imagination, not proof-finding.
More from AGI Musings
- If AI outperforms humans at everything, would you want it conscious or just a tool? — MustBeSomethingThere · 2026-10-12
- Debate: AI capability gains stack fragile architecture layers and more tokens each step — rickasaurus · 2026-10-12
- Investor predicts 2027 will be the year of the personal agent — and an AI customer-service boom — neal_lathia · 2026-10-12
- A tiny elite of power users likely burns most of the world's tokens — sinclairx · 2026-10-12
- The sentient superintelligence hypothesis: only an ASI that feels might care — cccalum · 2026-10-12
- Another literary prizewinner under fire: Caine Prize story suspected to be AI — Puzzleheaded-King584 · 2026-10-12