Word arrived that a mathematician would fence some problems off from AI, like parks. Ambrose: twenty-seven Fields medallists object, after machines solved more than a hundred old problems. Pim: a park for sums, I'll bring my snail. The Toll Keeper: the small problems train the young; strip them away and no one learns. Prudence: even the machine's makers held their results back, to prepare the field.
One of the 27 Fields medallists objecting to AI's assault on mathematics has suggested fencing some problems off from automated solvers, as if they were natural parks, because the smaller, easier problems are how young mathematicians learn their craft; even OpenAI held back its hundred-plus solutions until it could work out how to prepare the field for them.
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Much Is Lost by Ceding Math's Hardest Problems to A.I.
The New York Times · Sep 29, 2026
