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I’m just going to say this 100 times I guess. Terence Tao has had a very consistent narrative on AI in math for a very long time, at least since 2023. He’s alwa

I’m just going to say this 100 times I guess. Terence Tao has had a very consistent narrative on AI in math for a very long time, at least since 2023. He’s always described it as a surprisingly good tool and has advocated that mathematicians adopt the technology without becoming totally reliant on it. He’s also always argued that mathematics is fundamentally about human understanding. There’s no change in his messaging recently on the basic narratives. It is not right to project one’s grief onto others and then characterize all their actions through this lens! (This post is attributed to other people and doesn’t sound like his voice by the way, which highlights the problem with doing so.) And it’s especially wrong to pose what looks like a therapy diagnosis on a stranger in public as a non-expert.

curt15 3d ago
> He’s also always argued that mathematics is fundamentally about human understanding. It's also worth pointing out he didn't come up with this viewpoint just to "cope" with the headlines. Thurston articulated this way back in the 90s (https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236 https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/9404236) and also more recently (https://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematician-to-do https://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematici...): > The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves. Is there, for example any real reason that even such famous results as Fermat's Last Theorem, or the Poincaré conjecture, really matter? Their real importance is not in their specific statements, but their role in challenging our understanding, presenting challenges that led to mathematical developments that increased our understanding.