I think the villains who run these companies benefit from Tao’s actions because he’s a de facto thought leader of mathematics not taking a very hard anti-AI stance. However, I don’t think a very hard anti-AI stance is correct for someone in his position. Honestly, do you want a bunch of AI labs to 100% dictate the future of whatever your field is or do you want the best leaders of your field to at least try to shape how AI will change it? And if all of the legitimate people in math ignore AI entirely, then historically important parts of the field will get entirely taken over by dilettantes and AI labs. I’m all for math institutions being a safe haven for AI free math work. But I don’t want to see some space X intern solve all the most important problems on a whim and no leaders in math be aware of it.

(I’m not sure the extent to which you think this is marketing. I’m operating under the assumption that you agree with his Hypothesis 4.1. If you don’t, then I’d assume you haven’t seen the long list of prominent open math problems that these systems are providing answers to. And if this doesn’t sway you about Hypothesis 4.1 I’d just halt and ask why.)