As of: 2026-10-12 07:22 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/p/2026-09-17-koukoulopoulos-cern-for-ai-assisted-science/

# A CERN for AI-assisted science?

Dimitris Koukoulopoulos, Blog, 2026-09-17.
Source: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/a-cern-for-ai-assisted-science/

## Why it matters

Guest post on Terence Tao's blog proposing publicly funded frontier AI for academic research, written after OpenAI's Navier–Stokes announcement; among the blog's top posts in October 2026.

## Summary

Guest post by the number theorist Dimitris Koukoulopoulos on Terence Tao's blog (17 Sept 2026; Tao notes it was converted from
another file format using AI; 32 comments when read on 12 Oct 2026). He argues that private control of frontier AI threatens the
confidentiality of unpublished work, research independence and equal access for early-career researchers, and proposes public
infrastructure: "we need to build a CERN for AI-assisted science." Concretely, "Every researcher should have access to a simple
chatbox to directly access frontier AI models", free at a baseline level and backed by public compute, with competitive
allocations for larger multi-agent projects.

He cites OpenAI's announced Navier–Stokes solution, its "ten advances in mathematics" made with unreleased models, and an
AI-assisted effort that passed Julia Stadlmann's bounded-gaps record within days. As funding precedents he cites Canada's
C$2 billion over five years for sovereign AI compute (up to C$1 billion for public supercomputing), the EU's call for up to
seven AI Gigafactories with up to €10 billion of public money, and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada's peer-reviewed
allocation process. "I think we urgently need publicly funded frontier AI systems for academic research." "Complacency and
defeatism are not an appropriate response."

## Archived text

Summary and short quotes only; read via a page summary on 2026-10-12, not archived in full.

## Cited in

- 2026-10-09: [Terence Tao's Caltech lecture 'Math 2.0'](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-09-tao-math-2-0-caltech-lecture/)
- 2026-09-08: [OpenAI claims a Millennium Prize problem](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-09-08-openai-navier-stokes-blowup/)

## People in this post

- [Terence Tao](https://postcutoff.com/person/terence-tao/), Professor of mathematics, UCLA