To everyone now claiming arXiv should let everyone freely post whatever: you already have venues like that. The fact arXiv is different is literally the only value it has over those others.
It’s disappointing to see how many responses to the signed math letter are distasteful and just gross.
First of all. Terrence Tao was one of the first highly regarded mathematicians to embrace AI.
His interest is straightforward. To advance the field of mathematics as much as possible for as long as possible.
Doing that requires creating societies of thought, providing tools that are safe to use, and innovating on the operating models between people and machines.
The letter, if you take time to read it, highlights that the problems are being treated as benchmarks in order to gain corporate stature. Moreover, as we have seen, there are real questions as to whether private chats are making their way into training data.
These are not the conditions that foster collaboration. The responses to initial letters of concern have been in many cases, shameful.
Moving on from the controversy. Current machines are not altogether very good at mathematical innovation. They excel at problem classes where proof by counterexample are prevalent, because they enable scalable search of a semantic space.
In fact, we do not yet know if Transformers are going to be good at the Symbolic AI and creative acts required for harder classes of proofs. There is still a strong need for mathematicians to fill this gap, which requires decades of commitment on their part to the creative act.
Which is why I find it entirely disgusting to see responses like the ones below. It’s juvenile and self-serving. Display decency and human empathy. One day AI will come for your job, and you will want the same.
In the end, we are all humans and we should be working towards a common endeavor. Whether you’re long or short some stock I frankly don’t care. See the forest through the trees.