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

What's new 2026-09-13 Terence Tao

Context & Ripple Effects

The intervention builds on the Leiden Declaration's warning about AI accuracy and reliability in mathematics, moving the debate from technical reliability to whether problem-solving benchmarks themselves serve the field's goals.

It also arrives after OpenAI withdrew support from Caltech's AI math hackathon amid criticism of “slop mathematics,” putting research-community legitimacy alongside raw benchmark performance.

First-order effects

AI companies face a more organized, high-status challenge to presenting success on mathematical problems as unqualified evidence of progress.
Mathematicians and event organizers gain a public basis to distinguish work that advances understanding from work optimized for benchmark-style problem solving.

Second-order effects

OpenAI's withdrawal from the Caltech event makes sponsorship and partnership decisions a venue for that dispute, raising scrutiny of how research problems are selected and evaluated.
Labs seeking credibility with the mathematical community face pressure to demonstrate reliability and scientific value rather than relying on solved-problem counts alone.

Third-order effects

If benchmark incentives remain misaligned with mathematical practice, evaluation may shift toward standards that reward verification, explanation, and research usefulness rather than isolated answers.
The episode points to a broader legitimacy constraint on frontier AI labs: domain experts can contest not only model outputs, but the metrics used to define progress.

The trend: AI evaluation is moving into a legitimacy debate over whether benchmark optimization measures genuine scientific contribution or merely performance on a proxy.

Discussion

@ccatalini Christian Catalini on x
Here's where they're wrong: this is the reason to embrace AI, not fear it! Use it to give mathematicians more time to deepen understanding and ask better questions. Those were always the goals. Solving problems was the imperfect proxy, never the end goal. https://terrytao.wordpre…
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
If you think that a letter from 25 Field Medalists is about “cope
@bubbleboi Bubble Boi on x
Lots of people dunking on Terrance Tao but trust me, that's who you want running the 10,000 agents. Don't get too overzealous, compute is not substitute for idea guys.
@alexgrenier Alex Grenier on x
People are going to accept that medals going to people for doing smart things is basically fast becoming an artifact of times past. Now it's about acceleration, not handing out medals.
@jerryjliu0 Jerry Liu on x
There's something deeply philosophical about the importance of human understanding in a world where most work is done by AI. Terence Tao's whole point in the letter isn't that AI is universally bad, but that it should be used in a way that complements the advancement of human und…
@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.
@malemanlpulator @malemanlpulator on x
He's saying AI labs are Goodhart-ing mathematics but you midwits are too stupid to understand. To put it in simple terms: millennium prize problems are *metrics* for mathematics progress. AI labs are *optimizing* the metrics and thereby making them less useful. Get it now?
@bengrossbg Ben Gross on x
There is something refreshing, despite the dark and pressing motivations behind it, in finally having real cultural space to examine the intrinsic value of activities that have, for a very long time now, been constantly forced to justify themselves instrumentally. Humanism rides.
@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-Stoke…
@no_earthquake @no_earthquake on x
imo a lot of people are deeply misreading this as lamenting the death of personal pleasures in the face of efficient goal-attaining when it's a lament of the death of actual goal-attaining in the face of optimized things-shaped-like-goals-attaining
@markbao Mark Bao on x
A lot of people are missing Terence Tao's point and thinking “mathematicians are upset that AI is better than them.
@daveshapi David Shapiro on x
“Generational threat to our being special” Such wild gatekeeping. So what, we should shut down AI progress so that human progress slows to a snail's pace?
@majamediaco Maja on x
it's easy to dismiss Terrence Tao here as a romantic mathematician defending the slow, whimsical path, but i think he's pointing at something well beyond mathematics it's easier than ever to outsource a task, but we still have poor ways of noticing what disappears when we do. i w…
@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...
@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…
@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.
@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
@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
@lu_sichu Sichu Lu on x
this is 48 percent of all living field medalists, they really feel attacked huh.
@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)
@_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?)
@scaling01 @scaling01 on x
fields medalists are dooming it's so over https://terrytao.wordpress.com/ ...
@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.
@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!
@avi_eisen Avraham Eisenberg on x
“we have AI misalignment at home” AI misalignment at home: “AI is solving too many math problems, which is bad for mathematicians” wasn't this guy supposed to be super smart or something
@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.
@fleetingbytes @fleetingbytes on x
the terrance tao crashout is something to behold
Tom Hayden Tom Hayden on linkedin
Letter co-signed by 25 Fields Medalists: “We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose. …
Florian Schneider Florian Schneider on linkedin
An important intervention by some of the world's top mathematicians - true for any creative or intellectual human pursuit …
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 …
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/
@rogerhighfield Roger Highfield on bluesky
Open letter by Fields medalists: “the push by AI companies to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics, and to the mathematical community” terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/11/ a...
@thserra Thiago Serra on bluesky
I am endorsing this declaration about the misalignment between AI and mathematics: — mathandai.org
@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…
@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.
@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…
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