Mathematicians Weep: Fields Medalist Mourns as OpenAI Cracks Decades-Old Proofs
stevenstrogatz · x · 2026-10-16
Derek Thompson's new newsletter, "I Know Why the Mathematicians Weep," explores the "technological grief" of knowledge workers watching AI master their craft.
- The trigger: OpenAI recently published hundreds of math findings spanning number theory, theoretical CS, and logic—many stumping the world's best mathematicians for decades or centuries.
- Reactions: 2022 Fields Medalist Hugo Duminil-Copin said he cried and felt his research field was "annihilated"; Cornell's Steven Strogatz described colleagues saying AI is "strip-mining our subject," leaving him oscillating between disorientation, exhilaration, and enormous grief.
- Core argument: This grief is more than bruised ego—it's the uncanny feeling of a machine doing the intellectual work your identity was built on. Math is both a craft (discovery) and a conversation (relationships with fellow discoverers); AI disrupting the former may magnify the significance of the latter.
- Warning: Today it's mathematicians; tomorrow it may be physicists, economists, illustrators, or writers.
The piece also probes what makes humans special and what makes math special, drawing heavily on Strogatz's reflections.
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