Terence Tao proposes Mathematics 2.0: AI makes proofs proliferate, calls for evaluations to include failed results and compute costs

Fields Medal winner Terence Tao published a post proposing "Mathematics 2.0," arguing that AI is making mathematical proofs go from scarce to abundant, and that the Mathematics 1.0 evaluation system built on proof scarcity is about to come to an end. He identified three overlapping conditions that make mathematics vulnerable to AI impact: proofs can be objectively verified, mathematical objects and reasoning processes are highly digitizable, and a large volume of high-quality research literature already exists in digital form. He cautioned that AI capabilities are uneven and vendors mostly showcase carefully selected success cases, calling for a more transparent and scientific evaluation mechanism that includes failure results and AI compute costs in reporting. He also broke problem-solving into five stages—generating proofs, verifying correctness, explaining clearly, being accepted by the community, and integrating into the field's standard theory—and argued that AI is unlikely to accelerate the last step, advocating for less emphasis on being first to produce a proof. After OpenAI released 722 mathematics papers in one batch on October 7, Tao led the founding of the Association for Human Mathematics (AHM) and issued a joint statement saying this practice does not count as research and urging mathematicians to stop collaborating with OpenAI.