A group of 25 Fields Medal recipients says AI companies' push to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics

I am proud to be among the list of 25 initial signatories — all Fields Medallists — to the declaration below, which grew out of discussions between ourselves over the last week.

What's new 2026-09-11 Terence Tao

Context & Ripple Effects

The statement escalates concerns raised by the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics, whose 16 signatories warned about accuracy and reliability. It also cuts against the more mixed, often optimistic assessment of AI’s role voiced by mathematicians at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians.

The dispute is unfolding as mathematical expertise becomes more tightly connected to frontier-lab work: Fields medalist Jacob Tsimerman is preparing to join OpenAI while launching a mathematical AI-safety institute. The signatories’ objection is therefore not to AI’s relevance to mathematics, but to the incentives created when research problem-solving becomes a lab benchmark.

First-order effects

AI companies that promote mathematical problem-solving as a measure of model progress face a coordinated public challenge from 25 Fields Medal recipients, raising the reputational cost of treating the field primarily as an evaluation resource.
The declaration gives mathematicians who share its concerns a common position from which to contest benchmark-driven research agendas and their standards of reliability.

Second-order effects

OpenAI’s planned recruitment of Jacob Tsimerman and its links to mathematical AI safety become more visible tests of whether frontier labs can engage the field without subordinating its research priorities to model evaluation.
Math-AI competitions and research collaborations face sharper scrutiny over whether they advance mathematical understanding or chiefly produce benchmark results; OpenAI’s withdrawal from Caltech’s math-hackathon sponsorship illustrates the surrounding friction, without establishing a link to this declaration.

Third-order effects

If prominent research communities continue to challenge benchmark-led engagement, frontier labs will need legitimacy not only from model scores but from durable relationships with the disciplines supplying problems, expertise, and validation.
The conflict points toward a split between AI systems used as tools within mathematics and mathematics used as a standardized proving ground for AI capability, with professional communities contesting the terms of that exchange.

The trend: As frontier labs seek scientific benchmarks for model progress, domain experts are asserting greater control over how their fields’ problems, standards, and institutions are used.

Discussion

@suchenzang Susan Zhang on x
turns out the AI grim reaper loooves arrogant purists! how precious can your pure nubile field be if it's the first to get boom headshotted by “lowly engineers”?
@avt_im Alexander Terenin on x
I agree! It is a major failure of AI leadership that we have reached a point where 25 Fields medalists thought that writing a letter like this is necessary. The race between frontier labs to be the first is just not that important in the grand scheme of things.
@scaling01 @scaling01 on x
fields medalists are dooming it's so over https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ...
@sporadica @sporadica on x
as predicted, Terence Tao and friends are not happy Mathematicians that spend their lives trying to solve math problems are unhappy that AI is solving math problems because how dare they!
@natolambert Nathan Lambert on x
A great read. I have similar feelings about how AI labs approach progress directly and without nurturing of scientific communities & intuition. The math research community went through the transition the fastest, so it was felt most. Other fields next. https://terrytao.wordpress.…
@suchenzang Susan Zhang on x
BREAKING: FIELDS MEDALISTS SIGN PETITION TO TAKE AI SERIOUSLY. CITES IMPENDING AI CONFRONTATION BY SOCIETY DOING “MANY OTHER FORMS OF INTELLECTUAL WORK”. THEY CONTINUE TO REMAIN UNAWARE THAT 99.99% OF THE GLOBAL GDP IS NOT BUILT ON TOP OF FIELDS MEDAL LEVELS OF INTELLECTUAL WORK.
r/accelerate r on reddit
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
I am rooting for the mathematicians
@manan @manan on x
yes, every industry where jobs have been threatened have said the same thing about AI...
@richten_nach Johannes Schmitthenner on x
But solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight. Forgetting this in the world of AI may turn the tool against the primary goal. Indeed, the mass production at faster and faster pace of “true/false
@dynamicwebpaige @dynamicwebpaige on x
👩‍💻 Paige Bailey — “We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work …
@rperezmarco Ricardo Pérez-Marco on x
In these signature lists it is more interesting to see who does not sign. Surprise, surprise...I don't see the signatures of Tsimerman and Gowers. The founders of the MAISI institute (the teojan horse of math)
Alessio Figalli Alessio Figalli on linkedin
The recent news from OpenAI on the Navier-Stokes problem has generated significant interest in the use of AI in mathematics: — https://lnkd.in/... …
Martin Hairer Martin Hairer on linkedin
Together with a number of other mathematicians, we tried to put into words some of our thoughts about recent major AI-generated results: https://mathandai.org/
@zachweinersmith Zach Weinersmith on bluesky
Very forceful statement by Terry Tao about AI and math. — terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/11/ a... Note, he is not claiming the models aren't real and powerful. He's talking about how that power should be used. This, I believe, is what all AI discussions should center.
@lemonodor John Wiseman on bluesky
25 Fields Medallists, including Terry Tao, have signed a declaration: “We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose”. terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/11/ a...
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social Matthew Sheffield on mastodon
Noted mathematician Terrence Tao has coordinated a great open letter about AI and society. — The technology in use now will never become sentient. How it is used and who owns it are the actual issues to consider. — Humans have not achieved anything close to alignment among o…
r/slatestarcodex r on reddit
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics - open letter signed by Tao and ~2 dozen other Fields Medalists
r/mathematics r on reddit
25 Fields Medalists: “The goals of the AI companies and the goals of the mathematical community are severely misaligned”
@deredleritt3r Prinz on x
In December 2024, o3-preview scored 87.5% on ARC-AGI-1. This run cost >$4,500 per task. In July 2026, DeepSeek-V4-Flash scored 87.0% on ARC-AGI-1. This run cost $0.021 per task. Please realize that all OpenAI has done is bring forward the AI-generated solution to Navier-Stokes by…
@lacker Kevin Lacker on x
I am disappointed to see these mathematicians come out against the use of AI to solve major math problems. Math is important, not just a game for professors to play. We should learn what this powerful new tool is capable of, and discover many new things. https://terrytao.wordpres…
@nntaleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb on x
Something bad for the (existing) class of mathematicians as they lose their privilege, but not necessarily bad for mathematics & our body of knowledge?
@prz_chojecki Przemek Chojecki on x
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics New blog post by Terry Tao and a new anti-AI declaration signed by 25 Fields medallists. I'm not sure what the intendent effect should be. The ban of AI use in mathematics and science in general because of “math community
@_jason_dean_ Jason Dean on x
In summary, Tao is saying that brute forcing open math problems messes up the pipeline/ecosystem that encourages further scientific exploration I guess the relevant question is whether a smart AI can propose an innovative open problem (invent a stone he cannot lift?)
@danrothenberg Daniel Rothenberg on x
I'm no mathematician and have no business endorsing this, but the perspective rings very true for many fields including meteorology. In our domain, one major misalignment is the lack of context surrounding how, why, and by whom weather forecasts are consumed.
Olga Holtz Olga Holtz on linkedin
25 Fields medallists, my colleagues and friends, share a warning: mathematics is not a leaderboard. — Their declaration, A Severe Misalignment …
@tedunderwood.com Ted Underwood on bluesky
Like Zach I think there's a chance this changes behavior re: math. But even if it doesn't do that immediately, it's a good model for the kind of reflection we are going to need across other fields. The discoveries are already there in the Library of Babel; human understanding i…
@danintheory Dan Roberts on x
We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive. We're looking to engage with the math community more on the best way to integrate this technology and communicate its impacts. After considering concerns raised by members of the mathematics community, we've…
@8teapi Prakash on x
😂 So Caltech undergrads wanted to, like barbarians at the gate, use their AI credits to destroy open math problems, but one thousand older, senior mathematicians, the established ones with Fields medals and honors under their belt were absolutely outraged that these tyros, these …
@sytelus Shital Shah on x
If I understand correctly, some mathematicians are arguing in disguise that only they should be allowed to prompt AI on open problems otherwise they are not cared for. Never thought car dealership level protectionalism will emerge in the most intellectual community.
@elliotglazer Elliot Glazer on x
Thank you for sparing math academia the terror of undergrads getting access to the tool that's increasingly essential to modern math research. We can rest assured they'll all spend the next 6 years of their lives writing pencil and proofs and everything will go back to normal.
@scottstts Scott on x
Math as a discipline started as a way to solve real world problems in abstract forms, now it's the play thing for the academics. What they want is for math to remain unsolved forever so they can justify their existence indefinitely, and keep receiving their brain teaser stimuli u…
@tracewoodgrains Jack on x
I'm not in the math community and so my opinions on this should be discounted, but I would be extremely appreciative of the opportunity to blow a bunch of credits tinkering with frontier models in my area of interest and I think it's a shame to crush that for these undergrads
@john_iller Jack Miller on x
OpenAI is pulling free credits for math undergrads in a math marathon, basically because career mathematicians have hurt egos over recent developments this will happen 100x in science and medicine and all other fields for the exact same reasons
@ben_golub Ben Golub on x
The reply that the Mathathon organizers have written (with links to information about the saga) https://proofsandprompts.com/ ...
@samth Sam Tobin-Hochstadt on x
@ben_golub Whether this is reasonable depends entirely on whether you think the stuff being stigmatized is bad. If it is, then the claim is just “OpenAI shouldn't financially incentivize students to do bad things they will later be judged for”.
@ctjlewis Lewis on x
Boomers taking opportunity away from kids. What else is new?
@aurifomo @aurifomo on x
@danintheory You should not let a bunch of luddites pressure you.
@ben_golub Ben Golub on x
I don't want to say too much about this open letter against the Mathathon, but the logic here (by a group of mathematicians) is really something: “It's very uncaring of you to help young people engage with this technology, since we might stigmatize them for it.”
@navvye Navvye Anand on x
did not expect this, this is absolutely a net negative for math.
@kristapsbalodi3 @kristapsbalodi3 on x
Im going on the record here as saying this is a shame. I applied, along with my friends, and I was looking forward to attending and seeing what discoveries we could unearth.
@lianda_edu T. Y. Hayashi on x
The gatekeeping by certain people in mathematics and microeconomic theory (ones I know) is equally nauseating. What? You're an undergrad? You solved the Riemann hypothesis? I don't care—that's definitely AI slop, a pile of shit! What? You're a big Booth professor who writes two h…
@ben_golub Ben Golub on x
@danintheory IMHO this reaction by you guys is really silly - arguments like the one the mathematicians made here should not be rewarded https://x.com/...
@hypergameme Arthur on x
@danintheory That sucks and it's the wrong decision, but at least you're protecting some old fogies' mistaken sense of importance.
@sams_antics Sam McRoberts on x
@danintheory lol, ignore the whinging twats, all mathematicians build on the work of others. Just press forward for the good of humanity, we don't need to coddle those whose feathers are ruffled.
@sytelus Shital Shah on x
Terry Tao finally realizing how others felt when he casually demolished their decade long problems.
@headinthebox Erik Meijer on x
Sorry, but I find “the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight” to be elitist and entitled. And “We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work” rather short-sighted and lacking creativity.
@glassbottommeg Megan Fox on bluesky
Yeah, this tracks: terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/11/ a... The point of a mathematical proof isn't pooping out a yes/no, it's about understanding the process by which you came to the solution and what it means for work you do on top of it.
r/singularity r on reddit
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics
r/aiwars r on reddit
A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics

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