Mathematicians Warn: AI Race Threatens Our Field

Twenty-five recipients of the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics, warned on Friday in a letter that the race by artificial intelligence companies to solve famous mathematical problems threatens to cause lasting damage to the field.

Their joint and cautionary message, signed by prominent scientists including Terence Tao, comes days after OpenAI announced the solution to one of the Millennium Prize Problems, which had eluded mathematicians for generations.

The 25 signatories represent a timespan of nearly five decades in the history of the Fields Medal, from Pierre Deligne, who won it in 1978, to Ding Xin, who received the honor this year.

The scientists stated that there is a specific system related to problems, where they are posed with the aim of helping students develop their skills.

The letter clarified that the question lies in “how to ensure that, amid the transformation of work methods by artificial intelligence, we do not overlook what this work was meant to achieve.”

They emphasized the urgent need to address these issues, both within the mathematical community and by the companies developing these technologies, or more broadly by society at large.

This message follows OpenAI’s announcement on Tuesday that one of its unreleased models succeeded in solving the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, after a process lasting 88 hours involving thousands of AI agents working in parallel.