Math 2.0
Terence TaoBlogImportance: major (4 of 5)
Why it matters
Tao’s slides and summary of his Caltech public lecture, his fullest response to OpenAI’s 722-manuscript release: ‘proof abundance’ makes blind problem-solving harmful, and AI should serve human understanding.
Summary
Short blog post (10 Oct 2026, categories math.GM and talk) with the slides of the public lecture “Math 2.0” that Tao gave at Caltech on the evening of 9 Oct. The talk, first planned as “Machine Assisted Proof” for May, “changed significantly” with “recent events”. It describes “Math 1.0”, “the current state induced by the excessive emphasis on automated solving of open problems by AI”, and a “Math 2.0” where AI tools “sustain both the internal mathematical community, and the role that mathematical understanding plays in advancing and aligning the applications of mathematics to the real world”. Tao says the content was also added to his AI-maintained living summary of his views on AI. Slides: https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/slides/math-2-0-caltech-2026.pdf
Archived text
Blog post; summary only