Fields medalist Borcherds: AI math came 10 years early, grad students are dropping out
lpachter · x · 2026-10-20
After OpenAI announced a solution to the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, UC Berkeley's math community is at a crossroads. Fields medalist Richard Borcherds said he only expected this level of capability in 10 years.
Quoted remarks: "It's fairly obvious that if things go like this, in a few years, humans doing math research will be redundant." AI is already better than beginning grad students, he claimed, making advice to them hard since the future is "changing in a rather major way." "If you're starting off as a grad student in math, it's likely that AI will always be better than you at mathematics—grad students are not stupid, this has occurred to all of them, and quite a lot of them are dropping out or getting very worried."
Related event: Fields Medalist Borcherds Weighs In on OpenAI Math Proof Debate(3 posts)→
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