Twenty-five Fields Medal winners: AI and math "severely misaligned"

The joint statement from 25 Fields Medal winners represents a rare collective intervention by the mathematics profession's most decorated figures. It follows earlier warnings from signatory Terence Tao about an AI-driven foundational crisis in mathematics, and it arrives amid a specific controversy involving OpenAI and a Millennium Prize Problem. That dispute—where OpenAI is accused of racing researchers to a partial solution for publicity—illustrates the statement's claim that AI companies treat math problems as benchmarks to conquer rather than as vehicles for understanding.

The signatories describe how famous unsolved problems have served as "landmarks and lighthouses" for measuring improved understanding. When someone cracks one, the solution matters less than the new thinking behind it, which mathematicians then spend years pulling apart through talks, discussions, and simplifications. AI threatens to short-circuit that process, flooding the field with answers at machine speed. The statement links this to a broader "general threat to intellectual work," noting that years of training develop not just answers but the ability to formulate new questions. It points to education as evidence: homework can increasingly be done by AI while exams still ban it, and the gap in grades keeps growing.

The mathematicians are not calling for a ban, acknowledging AI's potential to accelerate genuine study. But they argue that whether these changes benefit or destroy the field will be determined by human decisions. For research universities and AI companies building math models, the test will be whether new methods can be properly written up, attributed, and integrated into the mathematical canon.