---
id: "2026-09-16-royal-society-fellows-ai-risk-letter"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-16-royal-society-fellows-ai-risk-letter/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2026-09-16"
date_precision: day
category: policy-safety
importance: 4
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 3
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-16-royal-society-fellows-ai-risk-letter/

# 42 mathematician Fellows of the Royal Society

Full title: 42 mathematician Fellows of the Royal Society, incl. Gowers, Hairer, Maynard and Scholze, call AI an 'emergency' in open letter to Paul Nurse

On 16 Sep 2026 42 mathematical Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society sent an open letter to its President, Sir Paul Nurse, expressing "extreme concern about the pace of development of AI". They wrote that in three months OpenAI's and Anthropic's models went from strong-student level to solving research problems, including a Millennium problem. They warned that comparable abilities likely exist in cyber, weapons, bio/chem and misinformation, and asked the Society to tell government and media: "We believe this is an emergency."

## Key facts
- Signatories (42) include Timothy Gowers, Martin Hairer, James Maynard, Peter Scholze, Claire Voisin, Wendelin Werner, Ingrid Daubechies, Marcus du Sautoy, Ben Green, Peter Sarnak, Kevin Costello, Richard Thomas
- Signatories state that none has 'any significant involvement with AI companies'; footnotes admit free model access and informal links
- Cites former lab employees' estimates of extinction risk 'as high as 10 percent over the next decade' and says these 'must not be dismissed as hype'
- Footnote: remarks apply to publicly available models 'such as ChatGPT6-Astra', since the Navier–Stokes methodology is not fully known
- Opened to all mathematicians for co-signing; 464 additional signatories on the public copy by 2026-09-29
- Posted on Tao's blog as a guest post by Ben Green; Tao supports it but did not sign, citing his collaborations with AI industry partners

## What happened

A week after the Navier–Stokes claim, many of Britain's most eminent mathematicians turned from arguing about credit to warning about catastrophic risk. The letter says their first-hand view of AI's rise in their own field convinced them that extinction-risk warnings are credible. It asks the Royal Society to use its influence with government and the media before the danger "becomes obvious to the wider public", when "it may be too late to act".

## Why it matters

It is one of the first collective x-risk statements from a scientific field that says it was persuaded by AI's performance in that field. The signatories include several Fields Medallists (Gowers, Hairer, Maynard, Scholze, Werner) who are not part of the AI-safety community.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 139 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 78 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): 169 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 108 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [Terence Tao's blog: Open letter from Fellows of the Royal Society on AI existential risk (guest post, Ben Green)](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/16/open-letter-from-fellows-of-the-royal-society-on-ai-existential-risk/) (terrytao.wordpress.com, official)
2. [Letter text with the 42 FRS signatories (Google Doc)](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-xOkPeHmDEdRigT2YcP2nLfTB56yOn4FFbBfVUIXCUE/edit?usp=sharing) (docs.google.com, official)
3. [Public co-signing copy 'Mathematicians concerned about the pace of development of AI' (Google Doc)](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N6ThWhupvmH0ofSnaxqnLEMfSTQX5cTLyTMYG27ID-w/edit) (docs.google.com, official)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created. Letter text read from the Google Docs linked on Tao's blog

## Related

- 2026-09-12: [Dario Amodei publishes "We Must Pace the Frontier", calling for a deliberate slowdown](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-12-dario-amodei-pace-the-frontier/index.md)
- 2026-09-11: [Fields Medallists' open letter 'A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics' criticises labs' race for famous problems](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-11-fields-medalists-letter-ai-mathematics/index.md)
- 2026-09-08: [OpenAI claims a Millennium Prize problem](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-08-openai-navier-stokes-blowup/index.md)
- People: [Terence Tao](https://postcutoff.com/person/terence-tao/), [Timothy Gowers](https://postcutoff.com/person/timothy-gowers/)