Terence Tao warns AI may erode open science in mathematics
Terence Tao, via Simon Willison, commented that AI is rapidly consuming open math problems as a non-renewable resource, and that even rumors of work on a problem can trigger massive AI-powered efforts to solve it first. He warned this may reduce incentives to share promising research directions, reversing centuries of open science tradition and harming the field's long-term future.
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Simon Willison
I wrote recently about how the collection of good, fruitful open problems is now being mined in a non-renewable fashion, leading to the potential scenario of these problems becoming scarce. [...] We have now seen that even the rumor of someone working on a problem can trigger a massive amount of AI-powered effort to flatten it before the original research project has time to reach its full potential. The incentives may now be pointing in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community, which would reverse centuries of traditions of open science and do serious long-term damage to the future of the field. — Terence Tao Tags: ai-ethics , mathematics , ai