Terry Tao Became an Evangelist for AI in Math

Tomte 25 points 8 comments June 08, 2026
www.quantamagazine.org · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (2 comments)

norir

Terry Tao is a next level vibe coder: he inspires people to do his vibe coding for him. As someone with a background in advanced math, though never even close to Tao's level, I find myself skeptical about this type of mathematics. I don't personally find it beautiful and it feels like the line between the profound and the trivial (as in of minimal importance not difficulty) is blurry. One could argue for pure mathematics that is of no practical utility but is aesthetically beautiful, but I struggle to see the beauty in a gargantuan lean proof constructed by 100 different people. Perhaps this work will lead to deeper insight about the universe and the human condition, but I catch a whiff of problem solving for the sake of problem solving untethered from a deeper sense of purpose and meaning.

nylonstrung

More accurate title would be "Terry Tao Became an Evangelist for Lean"

Semantic search powered by Rivestack pgvector
10,002 stories · 93,925 chunks indexed