A satire: AI comes for math one field at a time, until it reaches elliptic curves
matthew_d_green · x · 2026-10-29
Cryptographer Matthew Green shares a poem by Eran Tromer in the style of "First they came...", mocking how AI keeps conquering math: first matrix multiplication, then Navier–Stokes, the unit-distance conjecture, asymptotic SAT solving — each time nobody spoke up because "Bitcoin doesn't use it." Then AI comes for elliptic curves, the basis of Bitcoin's cryptography, and suddenly it matters.
The poem captures a real anxiety in the cryptography community: AI progress in math and algorithms may threaten existing public-key cryptosystems sooner than expected.
Related event: Cryptographer's Satirical Poem Mocks AI's Math Conquests(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- DeepMind paper: moral argumentation training makes LLMs decisive but no better at moral judgment — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-10-30
- "The newsletter is dead": Every's CEO says AI agents will read it before subscribers do — danshipper · 2026-10-30
- Ex-Anthropic researcher launches Mirendil, 'what RSI means,' praised by Jack Clark — bneyshabur · 2026-10-30
- Agents Formalize Math Theorems in a Week: $135k in Tokens, 600k Lines of Lean — bneyshabur · 2026-10-30
- Healthcare CTO on AI agents for insurer enrollment: demos are easy, production is brutal — alex_verem · 2026-10-30
- Gary Marcus: the smartest people were wrong about the Metaverse too — GaryMarcus · 2026-10-30