alt Hacker NewsWhile so many are complaining about AI on HN, an absolute master of his field is using it without any self-doubt or negativity. Just getting stuff done better and faster while remaining at the top.
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> While tribe fear hot whispering rock, Wise number shaman wield it. Make cave painting faster, better. No fear. Shaman top mammoth hunter, king hill.
Other tribe not hate whispering rock. Tribe hate rock salesman saying it solve every problem. Thinking rock make many wrong marks! Shaman must check every mark himself! Whispering rock speak with big confidence even when wrong. Dangerous rock! Who clean mess? Shaman! Soon shaman forget how to hunt! Today rock help shaman. Tomorrow chief say no need shaman. Me worry.
> while remaining at the top.
isn't the linked post precisely an example of the opposite?
I don’t see enough people here expressing awareness of the deep societal revolution that is about to unfold. I’m grateful to Terence Tao for doing his best in this strange time to discover how human mathematics can adapt, but I’m not sure why you think this means he’s some uncritical user of AI. And he’s definitely not so shallow as being primarily motivated by staying at “the top”. That’s just silly.
Tao: “There will be some places where we should use AI, but we should take initiative and decide what those are,” he said. “We set the rules on what’s acceptable or not, and we should not let external actors define those for us.”
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2026/08/13/fields-medalist-...
In a recent talk (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49056620), Terence Tao plainly says that AI generating and verifying proofs is only part of the picture. The process of making the proof usable/readable and then canonicalizing them so they can form a foundation for math built on that proof is the other half of the picture and those things are something that can only be done by human minds.