Fields Medalist Hugo Duminil-Copin refuses AI in his own math research: "It gives you 42 but you have zero clue why"

Hesamation · x · 2026-10-19

Fields Medalist Hugo Duminil-Copin — who famously cried over OpenAI's formula-heavy paper dump — says he refuses to use AI in his own research: "People that don't want to use AI… they need to be able to practice their arts in the way they are doing it today."

When the interviewer pushed back, asking him to name one other field where we deliberately hold back technology that can already do the work just for students' sake, he argued:

"The human understanding of mathematics is the only thing that at the end benefits society."
If math's purpose were purely producing proven, formalized results, a fully automated version would suffice.
But that's a black box handing you answers: "It gives you 42 but you have zero clue why."

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Fields Medalist Hugo Duminil-Copin refuses AI in his own math research: "It gives you 42 but you have zero clue why"

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