25 Fields Medalists, Including Terence Tao and Deng Yu, Warn of "Severe Misalignment" Between AI Firms and Mathematics

Summary

Twenty-five Fields Medalists, with Terence Tao and Deng Yu among the first signers, issued an urgent public statement arguing that the way AI companies are pursuing mathematics is now in "severe misalignment" with the goals of the mathematical community. The statement explicitly does not call for stopping AI or deny its achievements. It raises three concerns: AI is solving problems faster than the community can digest the knowledge; AI firms optimize for benchmarks while mathematics values methods, understanding and transmission of knowledge; and once open problems are solved quickly, priority, training and open culture need new rules. Triggering the letter was OpenAI's claim of a Navier-Stokes result produced by 10,000 agents running for 88 hours.