**Mathematicians Confront the AI Apocalypse**

> What happens when machines surpass the most brilliant human minds? Mathematicians are finding out September 10, 2026 13 min read Add Us On Google Add SciAm If AI can do math, what’s the point of mathematicians? What happens when machines surpass the most brilliant human minds? Mathematicians are finding out By Joseph Howlett edited by Clara Moskowitz & Lee Billings Alex Eben Meyer Love math? Sign up for our weekly newsletter Proof Positive Enter your email I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American Inc. Privacy Policy . We leverage third party services to both verify and deliver email. By providing your email address, you also consent to having the email address shared with third parties for those purposes. Sign Up PHILADELPHIA, PA.—On July 24, the math world’s only true celebrity walked onto its most illustrious stage, to speak to the unprecedented threat that he and his peers are now facing. Terence Tao is not a dramatic man. He speaks in a soothing voice, often tipping his head down and closing his eyes as he plucks each word with care from some recess of his revered mind. But that evening, several of those words were uncharacteristically grave. His lecture, entitled “Mathematics in the Age of AI,” struck a more foreboding tone than any of his previous comments on the subject. “It is a very confusing mess right now.” Artificial intelligence’s rapid ascent in math research, he said, has created “a crisis in our mathematical values and practices.” Tao’s address was planned as the centerpiece of the International Congress of Mathematicians, the field’s largest gathering held once every four years, this time in Philadelphia. But just days ahead of it, Anthropic’s Claude Fable AI had disproved a longstanding mathematical idea called the Jacobian conjecture with a devastating, tweet-length equation . This came right on the heels of ChatGPT solving two other titanic open problems. A few months prior, any one of these feats would have been enough to secure a young mathematician a high-profile publication and a coveted tenure-track job. Now, many in the packed convention center ballroom felt completely at sea. On supporting science journalism If you&\#x27;re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Since that evening, the pace has only accelerated. On Tuesday mathematicians used AI to solve the first “Millennium Prize Problem” in 20 years—the field’s greatest conceivable achievement. The AI onslaught, Tao said to his tense audience, is a moment for circumspection. If mathematicians want to figure out what the human’s role will be in this evolving equation, they first need to step back and ask: Why do they do math in the first place? Mathematician Terence Tao signed copies of his new book at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia in July. Emmages/Simons Foundation Tao’s advice doesn’t just apply to mathematicians. As AI companies push their tech to surpass humans in every way possible, we’re all trying to figure out how we fit into the fast-approaching future. That means looking inward, asking why we do the things we do, and how we’re fulfilled by them. It’s a task we shouldn’t procrastinate on—as Andrew Sutherland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology put it to me over coffee at the congress, “mathematicians may be the canary in the coal mine for a lot of other professions.&rd...

**来源信息**
- **来源**：Hacker News：AI 热帖
- **分类**：行业
- **发布时间**：2026-09-12 09:15（北京时间）
- **原文**：[打开原文](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mathematicians-confront-the-ai-apocalypse)