AI Is Solving Math's Best Problems Faster Than They Can Be Replaced, Terence Tao Warns

Terence Tao, UCLA mathematician and 2006 Fields Medal winner, warns that AI is rapidly solving mathematics' most valuable unsolved problems faster than new ones emerge. Recent models from OpenAI and Anthropic have disproved the 80-year-old Erdős unit-distance conjecture and cracked a 90-year-old problem. Tao proposes marking certain problems "analysis-required" to preserve mathematical progress.

We have now seen that even the rumor of someone working on a problem can trigger a massive amount of AI-powered effort to flatten it before the original research project has time to reach its full potential.