Fields Medalist Borcherds on AI proofs: people are mad they're 'realizing they are dumb'
haider1 · x · 2026-10-20
Fields Medalist Richard Borcherds brushed off anxiety around OpenAI-generated math proofs: a 100,000-line formal proof of a major conjecture does no harm because "you can always ignore this if you want, and then you're no worse off than before."
His sharper takeaway: "what people are getting upset about is that they're slowly realizing that they are dumb and somehow blaming this on AI, even though it's not really AI's fault." The quote is resonating as a blunt rebuttal to the 'AI threatens mathematicians' narrative.
Related event: Fields Medalist Borcherds Weighs In on OpenAI Math Proof Debate(3 posts)→
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