CS Theory Fan retweeted
The big threat to the math/TCS community isn't the AI advances. It is the community's reactions to those advances that make us taken less & less seriously. It can lead to losing the next generation of top mathematicians (training=our main job). THAT would be our existential risk.
CS Theory Fan retweeted
Jacob Tsimerman, who won the Fields Medal this year, thinks mathematics will soon rest on proofs no one understands. He says it’s already true of many of his own theorems, which build on accepted results whose proofs he doesn’t know.
Full episode: youtu.be/6uIJdXmB4vE
CS Theory Fan retweeted
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CS Theory Fan retweeted
Interesting reading Frank Calegari's opinion on the new @OpenAI results!
He is actually one of my favorite math writers. Always witty and insightful.
galoisrepresentations.org/20…
CS Theory Fan retweeted
Tao is completely missing the mark - what he's describing is actually completely standard for drug discovery. There are tons of drugs that have saved millions of lives without any person on Earth understanding fully the mechanisms of action that enabled them to do this.
CS Theory Fan retweeted
Really astounding work.
The Poincare proof generalized to the full Geometrization conjecture, all in Lean.
We have now also completed a full Lean formalization of the Hamilton-Perelman proof of Thurston’s Geometrization conjecture!
Ben, Yuan, Ziyang and I completed this in collaboration with the Humanfia team at NVIDIA @juihuichung @LigengZhu
CS Theory Fan retweeted
I have a large number of math books in my collection; I've actually read them and enjoyed studying many of them. I have learned math on my own for decades because I liked doing it. I was never going to be faculty anywhere, never going to get a graduate degree in math, and never expected to pen a single paper in mathematics proving a single thing. I just liked learning math.
To me, nothing about mathematics has changed; I still like learning it. Whether it's humans smarter than me figuring things out that I then learn or it's AIs smarter than me, it makes no practical difference. I was only going to be a follower to begin with (and btw, that's true of the bulk of people studying math.) My enjoyment isn't diminished in any way.
The problem seems to be that for some people, the career aspects are more important than the subject itself. And, I get that, you have to make a living after all, though I think in practice there will be no fewer jobs for academic mathematicians after AI than before. (*That might not quite be true; reductions in the number of 18 to 22 year olds are probably putting pressure on the number of academic postings, but that has nothing to do with AI.)
However, mathematics qua mathematics is just fine, and cannot be injured by an oversupply of proofs of hard problems.
"mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done"
we're going to see a lot more of this in a lot of different fields
if these people genuinely loved math, they would be throwing parties to celebrate what might be one of the biggest days for mathematics in decades. but instead they're calling for a boycott
and it makes me wonder how many of them actually love math, and how many just love being seen as mathematicians.
because for a lot of people, the point of studying math isn't necessarily to understand the world, to explain it, or to advance the field. it's to be seen as a mathematician. to have a sense of importance, to feel valued by others. their entire identity is centered around this, and their goal is to be needed and considered smart
i think a lot of people are about to realize that what gave their life meaning wasn't really the work itself, but the fact that they were the ones doing it.
and i wonder what will happen when this happens to all professions. will we finally be forced to figure out what it means to be human?
maybe people will rediscover meaning in family, relationships and things outside of their careers.
or maybe millions of people will have an existential crisis because the one thing they've built their entire identity around is suddenly no longer needed
i genuinely wonder if society is ready for it
CS Theory Fan retweeted
I did quite a lot of mind sports in my life and met a few people that could be described as "the best in the world" in their competitive fields. I guess technically I was one of them too.
In every case, they were normal people who worked hard to become insanely good at their own craft. Given similar effort, I'd imagine many other people could achieve similar results.
I don't play scrabble and I have never met Nigel, but what he did (and still does) feels inhuman to me - it's honestly beyond what I think humans are capable of. I'd imagine his dominance would be much more apparent if scrabble didn't have such high variance and the top players weren't already playing close to optimal.
youtube.com/watch?v=zfH2Jwuf…
CS Theory Fan retweeted
I'm sorry, but this post is completely delusional. Giving students advice that relies on the AI progress plateauing is just actively harmful.
I understand that mathematicians are going through a rough time. Much of my identity is tied to solving hard intellectual challenges, so I can relate.
I just wish that people would accept the trajectory we're on and adjust properly. If we don't do that, we will get stuck in the past and won't be able to solve the problems of the future.
My great thanks to Terence Tao for offering to share a post of mine on his blog. The topic:
"What should we tell our students?"
If you are a student or early career mathematician, I would love it if you read it. If you are not, I would love it if you shared it with students! Thanks!
terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/…
CS Theory Fan retweeted
Science is NOT about people asking permission to contribute. If you have something to say, you say it. If you have a proof, you write a paper. It's always been like this. We don't need an "Advisory Group" to tell who can and who can't contribute to scientific research.
CS Theory Fan retweeted
*Mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done"
WTF?!! Since when was math something that was only done at the request of professional mathematicians?!!
Mathematicians don't own mathematics! This is crazy!!
CS Theory Fan retweeted
I disagree with this statement by the Association for Human Mathematicians -- the John Henrys of the profession.
The AHM membership includes a Fields medallist and several excellent mathematicians. But they do not speak for all mathematicians.
ahmath.org/statements
CS Theory Fan retweeted
When the proof of Fermat's last theorem was announced by Wiles in June 1993, newspapers around the world covered it extensively. I was a ten-year-old boy in Calcutta, India, and the story was splashed across my local newspaper. A few months later, I went to a bookshop with my grandfather and bought two popular books that tried to explain what all the excitement was about.
Yesterday was the single greatest day of mathematical breakthroughs in history. This is not an exaggeration.
In terms the collective significance and depth of the results released, this was at least ten times, perhaps even a hundred times, as momentous as the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
So where is the media? Where are the headlines, the breathless newsrooms, the door to door conversations? Where is the sense of incredible wonder this moment deserves?
CS Theory Fan retweeted
With Ben Chow, Yuan Liao and Ziyang Qin, we have completed a full Lean formalization of the Hamilton-Perelman proof of the Poincaré conjecture!
The proof is around 4.7 million lines of code, written in roughly two weeks. Grateful to the @DARPA expMath program for its support!
CS Theory Fan retweeted
We have now also completed a full Lean formalization of the Hamilton-Perelman proof of Thurston’s Geometrization conjecture!
Ben, Yuan, Ziyang and I completed this in collaboration with the Humanfia team at NVIDIA @juihuichung @LigengZhu
With Ben Chow, Yuan Liao and Ziyang Qin, we have completed a full Lean formalization of the Hamilton-Perelman proof of the Poincaré conjecture!
The proof is around 4.7 million lines of code, written in roughly two weeks. Grateful to the @DARPA expMath program for its support!
CS Theory Fan retweeted
Part of why I left OpenAI was the understanding that after math was solved, frontier AI research (and therefore my job) would be the next victim.
Btw if any math students or AI researchers want a new and interesting post-digital-AGI job please reach out
Well worth reading: proofsandprompts.com/2026/10…
CS Theory Fan retweeted
Wrapping up my first month at @DiscoLoopAI (am on leave from @PrincetonCS and @PrincetonPLI ). Excited to work on using AI to accelerate scientific discovery and solve important problems. My first startup experience, and with an incredible set of colleagues!
Announcing Discovery Loop!
I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress. The four of us have worked together for 14 to 30 years, and have helped build some of the world’s most used products, infrastructure and AI models, and we’re excited to turn our attention to this ambitious endeavor.
♾
Learn more at: discoveryloop.com
