25 Fields Medalists collectively slam AI companies: Stop treating math problems as benchmarks.

Insight Beating AI Express – A joint statement signed by 25 Fields Medalists, including Terence Tao, Yu Deng, and Peter Scholze, alleges that AI companies are using solving major mathematical problems as a performance benchmark, a practice that has begun to harm mathematical research. The statement acknowledges that large models have advanced rapidly in recent months, successfully solving several important unsolved problems across multiple fields, but emphasizes that mathematics prioritizes the new concepts, methods, and insights generated through rigorous exploration. Their primary frustration lies in AI companies rushing to publicize results prematurely. The statement points out that some solutions are announced before complete proofs are compiled, new methods refined, and prior scholarly citations added, leading to severe authorship and plagiarism issues. Without mathematicians taking the time to digest and organize these findings, the ideas uncovered by AI struggle to truly integrate into the mathematical system. While the statement does not name OpenAI, a companion report in The Economist directly titled its piece "Top Mathematicians Outraged by OpenAI’s Practices". Just days prior, OpenAI was embroiled in a controversy over authorship and undisclosed research related to the Navier-Stokes proof. Terence Tao noted that the statement was rapidly developed following discussions among the 25 Fields Medalists over the past week, as they judged the situation to be sufficiently urgent.