Terence Tao on '2x productivity': AI made papers richer, not deeper
JacquesThibs · x · 2026-11-06
JacquesThibs argues against compressing AI-accelerated speedups into single numbers like "2x more productive" — a tendency he says inflates progress, often driven by AI safety folks' bias toward 'warning the world.' The screenshot quotes Terence Tao from the Dwarkesh Patel interview: productivity isn't one-dimensional. AI speeds up auxiliary tasks (5x for plots, literature search, numerics) and lets an agent reformat LaTeX brackets, but rewriting a 2020-level paper wouldn't actually save much time. "It's made the papers richer and broader, but not necessarily deeper." The core hard math he still does with pen and paper.
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