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Terence Tao

Fields Medal-winning UCLA mathematician known for work in analysis and number theory, and an advocate for formal proof tools like Lean.

Known aliases

  • Terry Tao
  • 陶哲轩

Current stories

scienceOne report1 publisher

AI agents narrowed Grothendieck constant bounds after Princeton researchers reframed a stalled run

Theoretical computer scientists co-led by Princeton's Pravesh Kothari used two AI models to narrow the bounds of the Grothendieck constant. The preprint is not yet peer reviewed, and its authors say the models are weaker at judging a result's significance.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
investConfirmed7 publishers

OpenAI's unreleased model claims more than 370 math results at about three hours apiece

OpenAI published full or partial solutions to more than 370 open math problems on Tuesday. The company says its unreleased model averaged about three hours of computing on each, according to Fortune, and mathematicians still dispute the results.

Perspective Coverage

7 publishers
Builder
Builder 35%
Operator
Operator 35%
Investor
Investor 30%

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives65
Confidence60
investConfirmed3 publishers

Shing-Tung Yau launches math-AI alliance of eight institutions aiming to network more than 1,000 researchers

Fields medallist Shing-Tung Yau launched an alliance of eight research institutions to link about 1,000 researchers on AI for mathematics. Output would show whether it works: a specialised model, or conjectures and formalised proofs others can check.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 42%
Operator
Operator 20%
Investor
Investor 38%

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives55
Confidence58
investConfirmed9 publishers

OpenAI's 88-hour Navier-Stokes run leaves provenance in the vendor's own logs

The theorem was checked in Lean, more than most capability claims get, but the part that moves a valuation, that very little human input went in, rests on prompt timestamps and a training-data question that went unanswered.

Perspective Coverage

9 publishers
Builder
Builder 34%
Operator
Operator 27%
Investor
Investor 39%

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+35
Incentives75
Confidence50
productConfirmed3 publishers

OpenAI's math proofs fall short of a Princeton panel's verification standards

OpenAI released 719 manuscripts of claimed solutions to hard math problems this week and included the model's chain of thought for only ten of them. The advisory group of mathematicians OpenAI consulted had set verification standards the lab's release misses on several counts.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 44%
Operator
Operator 38%
Investor
Investor 18%

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+40
Incentives55
Confidence60
scienceConfirmed5 publishers

Mathematicians face months of reading to judge whether OpenAI's hundreds of proofs contain new ideas

OpenAI released hundreds of results on open problems in math and theoretical computer science, many already verified in the Lean programming language. Those are all but certain to be correct, so the months of reading ahead are about whether they hold new ideas.

Publishers:nature.com newscientist.com phys.org retractionwatch.com scientificamerican.com

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 33%
Operator
Operator 55%
Investor
Investor 12%

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+35
Incentives70
Confidence60
investConfirmed3 publishers

Lean proof checks cover about 300 of the 722 math manuscripts OpenAI's unreleased model produced

OpenAI published 722 math manuscripts across 372 result families, all produced by an internal model it has not released. About 300 come with Lean formalizations a machine can check, Crypto Briefing reported, so the rest wait on human reviewers whom one mathematicians' group is urging to stop working with OpenAI.

Perspective Coverage

3 publishers
Builder
Builder 30%
Operator
Operator 47%
Investor
Investor 23%

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption20
Hype gap+35
Incentives65
Confidence55
investOne report1 publisher

OpenAI posts 719 math papers from an unreleased model a week after its advisers asked labs to stop

OpenAI posted 719 math papers from an unreleased model on October 6, a week after its IAS-based advisers asked labs to stop such testing. Three mathematicians showed the same day that its machine-checked Navier-Stokes proof proves less than the paper claims, so its results now rest on ordinary peer review.

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives60
Confidence40
buildOne report1 publisher

Mathematicians' group chaired by Terence Tao calls for an OpenAI boycott over 700 AI proof files

Mathematicians in a group chaired by Terence Tao are urging a boycott of OpenAI after it released more than 700 AI-generated proof files at once. At issue is whether a problem counts as solved before a human has checked and understood its proof, and who does that work.

Publishers:the-decoder.com

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives65
Confidence40
buildConfirmed6 publishers

OpenAI hands mathematicians 372 AI-generated proofs to check on GitHub

OpenAI posted 372 results from an internal model to GitHub, at about three hours of ChatGPT Pro compute each on average. Finding proofs is now cheap enough that the slow step is mathematicians checking and judging them.

Perspective Coverage

6 publishers
Builder
Builder 44%
Operator
Operator 31%
Investor
Investor 25%

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption10
Hype gap+35
Incentives72
Confidence60
buildConfirmed8 publishers

OpenAI ships a Lean build that checks its Navier-Stokes proof against its own definitions

OpenAI's 165-page proof ships with a Lean 4 formalization anyone can download and build, which settles whether the argument follows from its own definitions and leaves whether those definitions state the Clay problem to human readers.

Perspective Coverage

8 publishers
Builder
Builder 41%
Operator
Operator 30%
Investor
Investor 29%

Reality

Evidence50
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+40
Incentives70
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

arXiv caps submitters at two papers a month after a 51% jump in submissions

arXiv now limits each submitter to two papers a month after September submissions reached 40,363, up 51% on a year earlier. Mathematicians blame AI-generated papers and say moderation has fallen behind.

Publishers:newscientist.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

OpenAI's louder rollout made its independent math advisers look like company appointees

OpenAI's louder announcement of a nine-member independent math advisory group caused widespread confusion over whether the company had appointed it. Its first job is helping release scores more results from an unreleased OpenAI model, a wave researchers already dread.

Publishers:theverge.com

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+20
Incentives60
Confidence50
scienceOne report1 publisher

Terence Tao names AI's arrival in math research a crisis in the field's values

Scientific American's account from the mathematicians' congress in Philadelphia has a Fields medalist quitting for OpenAI and a Millennium Prize problem falling to an opaque mix of models, with no verification trail reported for either.

Reality

Evidence30
Adoption35
Hype gap+45
Incentives65
Confidence35
scienceConfirmed7 publishers

Terence Tao says automated proof checking is why the AI labs stopped consulting mathematicians

A proof checker confirmed the steps of OpenAI's Navier-Stokes result within days. The argument now running through mathematics is over who explains the 166 pages and who gets the credit for them.

Perspective Coverage

7 publishers
Builder
Builder 46%
Operator
Operator 33%
Investor
Investor 21%

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+40
Incentives70
Confidence58
leadershipConfirmed5 publishers

OpenAI's Navier-Stokes claim sparks dispute over whether mathematicians' data was accessed

OpenAI says no specific user data was accessed to solve the problem, and that it cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from two mathematicians' use of its products improved its models. A procurement team has to read both sentences.

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 36%
Operator
Operator 33%
Investor
Investor 31%

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+45
Incentives70
Confidence60
investOne report1 publisher

OpenAI asks nine unpaid mathematicians how to release its 100-plus math results

OpenAI says its new nine-member mathematics advisory group will not advise on the pace of its internal research, and the group's own website says the decisions rest with the AI companies.

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption40
Hype gap+35
Incentives70
Confidence45
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Azhar counts nearly every hand up when he asks 250 IT executives about AI results

Azeem Azhar counted the raised hands himself, in a self-selected room of 250 IT executives at a Las Vegas conference. Every firm in it told him AI spending rises next year. Budgets have to answer for that.

Reality

Evidence32
Adoption45
Hype gap+38
Incentives68
Confidence58
leadershipOne report1 publisher

Twenty-five Fields Medalists sign a warning about how AI labs announce mathematical results

The declaration lands three days after OpenAI's Navier-Stokes claim, in the middle of a credit dispute where the company and the mathematician at the center give accounts that cannot both be right.

Publishers:genaisecretsauce.com

Reality

Evidence34
Adoption20
Hype gap+18
Incentives72
Confidence42
productOne report1 publisher

OpenAI takes back $1m of Mathathon credits on the day 771 mathematicians publish their letter

A Caltech open letter says research mathematicians end up verifying and correcting what AI companies announce, without pay or credit. OpenAI's sponsorship was $1m in credits, and it took them back.

Publishers:thenextweb.com

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption58
Hype gap+14
Incentives74
Confidence60

Earlier coverage

  1. Twenty-five Fields medalists call the AI industry's goals severely misaligned with mathematics

    Build · September 12, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers