Scientific American surveys mathematicians' anxiety over AI
2 Sep 12 · 11d ago · 6 articles · 15 posts · 24 comments · 5 sources · development 2 of 2
A feature recapped the summer's AI math breakthroughs and Tao's ICM warning, describing a field grappling with what role humans will play as AI companies race to conquer mathematics to prove progress toward superintelligence.
“mathematicians may be the canary in the coal mine for a lot of other professions”
Andrew SutherlandTerence Tao Mathematician (UCLA, Fields medalist)Andrew Sutherland Mathematician, MITOpenAI AI developerAnthropic AI developer
The whole story articlespostscomments the bright band is this development · numbered dots are the others · click one to jump
Reported in the same hours no headline names this development itself — these 6 claims were published in its stretch
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first by HN Frontpage, 11d ago · also WSJ Tech
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1 outlet An Existential Crisis in Math
first by The Atlantic, 8d ago
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first by HN Frontpage, 11d ago
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1 outlet The mathematicians rebel against AI
first by Marginal Revolution, 11d ago
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1 outlet Leading mathematicians fear AI is making their field dumber, and warn the rest of us is next
first by The Decoder, 12d ago
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first by WIRED, 12d ago
What people said 24 voices · best of 30 · verbatim
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So, turns out # AI actually did plagiarize its solution to a # math problem. I don't like their characterizations as plagiarism machines, but in this case it applies.
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A lot of them probably thought they were “too smart” and the AI would never come for their jobs. Gives a bit of a “first they came for the Jews and I was no Jew so I said nothing…” vibe. It's this and worse: people are pissed about it being their turn while people that they perceive as their lessers aren't suffering more. My entire life, people…
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Isn't the "kill us all" concern met by keeping nukes & essential infrastructure airgapped? This is something that should be the case already, and is certainly urgent if not the case. Instead of doomerism and calls to slow down the development of AI (not gonna happen), the conversation could be pivoted towards thorough threat analysis /…
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“As AI companies push their tech to surpass humans in every way possible, we’re all trying to figure out how we fit into the fast-approaching future. That means looking inward, asking why we do the things we do, and how we’re fulfilled by them. It’s a task we shouldn’t procrastinate on—as Andrew Sutherland of MIT put it to me over coffee at the…
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No nothing I said reinforces your argument. And your attempts at using AI to win the argument is just sad. You clearly arnt a researcher if you dont understand what I am saying so I don't know why you are on a ML subreddit. Is this some kind of larp? Also pay attention and realize you are on a machine learning subreddit not some random place with…
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This tracks with my experience. I have assembled a homebrew microbiology lab from various parts from aliexpress and integrated it into my agent harness. Just a year ago it was a complete mess, but current models are extremely good at synthesising novel protein and virus structures. One put me in the hospital not last week, haha! I cant wait to see…
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“The success of AI in solving major mathematical problems has made headlines...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.” - Terence Tao https:// terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09…
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We have the same exact problem in software engineering developing though. The issue is not the current crop of experienced engineers - most of us who have swum in the deep end have had the career existentialism removed with the understanding that there’s years of work to build up the ecosystem and tools for the new world - scalable guardrails…
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Maybe we should drone bomb all the datacenters then? Or just turn off the electricity.Or maybe just do a deep financial audit of all involved companies and investors. Really go into it with a bunch of motivated white collar crime prosecutors. Would be less violent and achieve same level of safety.
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A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics https:// terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09 /11/a-severe-misalignment-of-ai-in-mathematics/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub Posted into Andy Piper's News Picks @ andy-piper-s-news-picks-andypiper
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It doesn't matter, telling people you were trying to solve a problem that was largely regarded to be outside the ability of current mathematics to solve would have caused him to lose a lot of respect as a researcher in his department, probably get him saddled with more teaching responsibilities, less grant money etc. In the worst case it would…
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It seems that, one by one, every bastion against fearmongering click baits shall eventually fall...They might as well rename it to "This one new threat could kill your family"
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An Existential Crisis in Math https://www. theatlantic.com/technology/202 6/09/math-crisis-openai-millennium-prize/688631/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub Posted into All Stories @ all-stories-TheAtlantic
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The "solution" to cancer might very well depend on some mathematical research we haven't found yet. So much research is downstream of mathematical advancements and often we only know decades or centuries later what the downstream advancements are. Riemannian geometry was put forth in the mid 19th century as nothing but a theoretical exercise and…
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Hm, maybe if AI is powerful enough to crack our hardest math problems, we could demonstrate that by cracking one of our hardest math problems. It's not hard to know what they are.
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Hier eine Einordnung von Tyler Cowen zu Mathematik und AI. https:// marginalrevolution.com/margina lrevolution/2026/09/the-mathematicians-rebel-against-ai.html
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I think part of the challenge is - if we trained in the gym to specifically move heavy boxes around warehouses, as a career path and as a fundamental foundation of the economy, and suddenly we invented forklifts... Well, should we train people with forklifts or with weight lifting? And maybe further, what if the whole warehouse is now just…
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Very editorialised title. Not sure this offers any real value to be honest other than to drum up hype before IPO valuations hit for some of these companies.
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their argument is sound. The rampant use of gen AI to solve problems and move on will "salt the earth" of scientific discovery, keeping us all stale, unless something else shifts in society. This makes no sense. What does “salt the earth” mean here? What does “keep us all stale” mean? This sounds like vague-plaining nonsense because these guys are…
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If AI can crack the hard math problems, the article could just show one. The doom framing is a tell that there's nothing concrete to report yet.
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No no, you don't need to understand the Lean proof, you only need to understand the statement of the theorem. The statement of the theorem should be just a few lines of lean code, and it must be readable. The proof itself runs to thousands of lines of code and is completely impenetrable. The whole point of Lean is that you can verify it…
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> An ad hominem argument is an attack on a person's character, motives, or traits instead of addressing the actual facts or logic of their argument. which characterizes the core of every reply you’ve made here. I’m sorry it seems to have made you feel so attacked.
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The very nature of generative models is to create a distribution that is slightly different from the input distribution. So it's never going to be an exact replica of what it's seen already, unless you're overfitting on steroids.
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i have to ask, how much of it is labour for ruling class? like is it the only thing driving demand? what proportion is that vs taxpayers etc? also, is the alrernative to participating in society better?
All 2 developments of AI solves a Millennium Prize math problem, rattling… →
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