What Your Business Can Learn From the World’s Greatest Mathematician’s View of AI

Artificial intelligence is capable of some stunning feats, from generating mind-bogglingly convincing imagery and video to chatting in an incredibly human-like voice. Users’ growing embrace of AI for fun and help at work shows the technology already has practical applications–even before it evolves to super-genius levels–and may take over some roles in the workplace. But UCLA math professor Terence Tao, known as the “Mozart of Math,” isn’t particularly worried that AI is coming for his job soon. Tao, considered the world’s greatest living mathematician, spoke to the Atlantic recently about AI, and his words have impact far beyond the world of equations, proofs and hypotheses. Tao was asked about the impact of AI on the field of math, because he’d recently posted some scathing comments about OpenAI’s latest and supposedly greatest GPT o1 model. Touted as the first model from the leading AI brand that can “reason” as well as simply answer back to user queries, Tao posted on social platform Mathstodon that in his opinion the cutting edge AI was only as smart as a “mediocre, but not completely incompetent” graduate student. The magazine elicited a more in-depth explanation of Tao’s views, and what he said was deeply interesting for anyone who’s thinking about embracing AI into their workplace, or those who are worried that AI will displace people from their jobs. Entrepreneur Peter Thiel, for example, recently suggested AI could actually “come for” roles that rely on math first. Expanding on his criticism of ChatGPT, Tao said his remarks were misinterpreted. What he had been trying to do, rather than dismiss GPT o1’s capabilities, was point out that he “was interested in using these tools as research assistants.” That’s because a research project has “a lot of tedious steps: You may have an idea and you want to flesh out computations, but you have to do it by hand and work it all out.” This sort of methodical task is exactly what “reasoning” AI models should be great at, saving time and money for people like Tao, whose job involves this kind of data processing. Tao thinks AI tech–at least for now–is only good at this type of “assistant” role, and not necessarily a shining example of excellence here either. And Tao’s concluding remarks are even more telling. Asked about how AI is taking over some methodical math work, Tao pointed out that this has always been true of technology. To adapt, humans simply “have to change the problems you study.” In terms of AI use, Tao noted he’s “not super interested in duplicating the things that humans are already good at. It seems inefficient.” Instead he foresees a time when, “at the frontier, we will always need humans and AI. They have complimentary strengths.” So far, so very math nerdy. But, sitting at your desk in your office, working at tasks that seemingly have little to do with sophisticated mathematics, why should you care what Tao thinks? At least partly because of the kind of sentiment that Thiel voiced about the future of work. In terms of the question “will AI steal my job?” Tao is very definitely on the side of voices that argue “no.” In a similar way that the PC changed the average office job, AI will simply change what employees do hour by hour. The tech will mechanize some humdrum “research” tasks, and actually allow some of your workers to work more efficiently at tasks that directly generate revenues. So if you’ve been hesitant to embrace AI’s promise thus far, maybe you can go ahead—and reassure your staff that they’re not at risk. BY KIT EATON @KITEATON