Math's 'romantic era' is over, UCLA prodigy says

Terence Tao, a UCLA math professor who earned a doctorate at age 20, said that math is entering a new, less "heroic" age.

Jesse Grant/Getty Images Terence Tao, now a UCLA professor, earned his doctorate in mathematics at 20.

The prodigy said his work is changing in the age of AI.

With AI tools doing the legwork, math is no longer "heroic," Tao said.

AI is upending mathematics .

For one top professor, the issue is just as spiritual as it is practical.

Terence Tao, a renowned professor at UCLA, said in a recent podcast appearance that the "romantic era" of math is over, thanks to AI tools capable of solving hundreds of problems with some simple prompting.

Now, he said, even leading scholars like him are reduced to sorting through reams of AI-generated proofs, instead of doing the "heroic" solving themselves.

"We are moving to an industrial era where math will become much more large-scale," Tao said in an interview this week on Numberphile, a YouTube channel dedicated to math.

"We are entering an era where exciting new things are possible, but some things are being lost," he added.

OpenAI began its brusque push into the field by solving the Navier-Stokes equation in early September, one of math's millennium problems.

The revelation that AI had cracked it caused consternation from many a math geek.

Some mathematicians also expressed frustration that while the AI model might have solved the problem, it didn't show its work, leaving them with the less celebratory task of verifying it.

Then, earlier this month, OpenAI said it cracked another 700 outstanding problems.