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Crossed Wires: What does the world’s greatest living mathematician think of AI?

Daily Maverick · · 1220 words · By Steven Boykey Sidley
Intellectual Achievement AI Integration in Mathematics Human-Machine Collaboration
open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-05-03-crossed-wires-what-does-the-w…

psychologyDetected Techniques

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Loaded Language 80% confidence
Using words with strong emotional connotations to influence an audience.
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Appeal to Authority 90% confidence
Citing an authority figure as evidence, even when the authority is not qualified on the topic.
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Exaggeration / Hyperbole 70% confidence
Overstating facts or claims to create a stronger emotional response.

fact_checkFact-Check Results

10 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

verified Verified By Reference 5
check_circle Corroborated 2
help Insufficient Evidence 2
info Single Source 1
verified
“Born in Adelaide, he was doing university-level mathematics as a child, had his bachelor’s and master’s degrees by 16, a Princeton PhD by 20, and was a full professor at UCLA by 24 – still the youngest in that university’s history.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and UCLA's official biography confirm Tao was born in Adelaide, received bachelor's and master's degrees at 16, and earned a PhD from Princeton. While the 'youngest professor' detail is widely cited in biographies, the core biographical facts are verified by authoritative sources.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Terence Chi-Shen Tao (Chinese: 陶哲轩; pinyin: Táo Zhéxuān; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian and American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006 for his contributions to partial diffe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — This is a list of notable Australian Americans, including both original immigrants who obtained American citizenship and their American descendants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_Americans
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web search NEUTRAL — In 1991, he received his bachelor's and master's degrees at the age of 16 from Flinders University under the direction of Garth Gaudry. [21] In 1992, he won a postgraduate Fulbright Scholarship to und…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao
+ 2 more evidence sources
verified
“In 2006, he won the Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honour, for work spanning partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number theory.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Multiple sources, including Wikipedia and Britannica, explicitly confirm Tao won the Fields Medal in 2006 for the specific fields mentioned (PDEs, combinatorics, harmonic analysis, and additive number theory).
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Ben Joseph Green FRS (born 27 February 1977) is a British mathematician, specialising in combinatorics and number theory. He is the Waynflete Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Oxford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Green_(mathematician)
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a convention which takes pl…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Terence Chi-Shen Tao (Chinese: 陶哲轩; pinyin: Táo Zhéxuān; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian and American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2006 for his contributions to partial diffe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
“As far back as 1956, Newell, Shaw and Simon’s Logic Theorist proved dozens of theorems from Principia Mathematica”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and other web results confirm the Logic Theorist was created in 1956 by Newell, Shaw, and Simon and proved 38 of the first 52 theorems of Principia Mathematica.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was an American researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Sci…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Newell
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — John Clifford Shaw (February 23, 1922 – February 9, 1991) was a systems programmer at the RAND Corporation. He is a coauthor of the first artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist, and was o…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Shaw
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Logic Theorist is a computer program completed in 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Cliff Shaw. It was the first program deliberately engineered to perform automated reasoning, and has been …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
“As late as 2024, Tao himself described chatbots as feeling like advising “a mediocre, but not completely incompetent, graduate student”.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
The provided evidence for this claim consists of unrelated World Economic Forum reports and Wikipedia entries on Kakeya sets and Lean. There is no evidence in the provided results that Tao made this specific comment in 2024.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — In mathematics, a Kakeya set, or Besicovitch set, is a set of points in Euclidean space which contains a unit line segment in every direction. For instance, a disk of radius 1/2 in the Euclidean plane…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakeya_set
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Lean is a proof assistant and a functional programming language. It is based on the calculus of constructions with inductive types. It is a free and open-source software project hosted on GitHub. Deve…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_(proof_assistant)
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The prolific mathematician Paul Erdős and his various collaborators made many famous mathematical conjectures, over a wide field of subjects, and in many cases Erdős offered monetary rewards for solvi…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conjectures_by_Paul_Er…
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
“Born in Budapest in 1913, Erdős was the most prolific mathematician of the 20th century, co-authoring papers with some 500 collaborators across six decades.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Wikipedia and other biographical sources confirm Paul Erdős was born in Budapest in 1913 and collaborated with over 500 co-authors.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — This is a list of Hungarian Jews. There has been a Jewish presence in today's Hungary since Roman times (bar a brief expulsion during the Black Death), long before the actual Hungarian nation. Jews f…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hungarian_Jews
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conject…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős
+ 3 more evidence sources
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“He died in 1996 at a conference in Warsaw, mid-problem.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided web search results for this claim are completely irrelevant (referring to a bakery called PAUL). However, the Wikipedia entry for Paul Erdős in claim 4 confirms he died on September 20, 1996. The specific detail about dying 'mid-problem' at a conference in Warsaw is not explicitly detailed in the provided evidence snippets, though the date and person are correct.
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web search NEUTRAL — Devenir Franchisé PAUL A l’occasion du prochain Franchise Expo Paris 2026, PAUL présente son savoir-faire en matière de Franchise et de Location-Gérance.
https://www.paul.fr/
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web search NEUTRAL — Commandez votre sandwich du midi en Click & Collect sur le site PAUL. Grâce à la vente de sandwichs à emporter, vous évitez de faire la queue dans la boutique PAUL la plus proche de chez vous ou de vo…
https://www.paul.fr/dejeuner/sandwichs
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web search NEUTRAL — Maison boulangère de qualité depuis 1889, PAUL vous propose un assortiment de pâtisseries gourmandes et sophistiquées. Des plus classiques aux plus audacieuses, nos pâtisseries, individuelles ou à par…
https://www.paul.fr/patisserie
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“Erdős left behind more than 1,000 unsolved conjectures”
CORROBORATED
One source explicitly mentions 1,179 unsolved conjectures, and Wikipedia describes him as one of the most prolific producers of mathematical conjectures.
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web search NEUTRAL — Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős
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web search NEUTRAL — The legendary mathematician Paul Erdős left behind 1,179 unsolved mathematical conjectures.More than a search engine. Google's Gemini found a remark buried deep in a paper from 1981 that unknowingly s…
https://www.warpnews.org/artificial-intelligence/ai-helps-ma…
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web search NEUTRAL — Paul Erdős left behind more than papers and theorems. He left a blueprint for a life of the mind, collaborative, playful, and driven by curiosity. He proved that the simplest questions can open doorwa…
https://medium.com/@vplevris/the-mathematician-who-owned-alm…
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“On 24 April, Scientific American reported the story of Liam Price, a 23-year-old with no advanced mathematical training, who gave an Erdős problem to GPT-5.4 Pro. The model produced a solution to a 60-year-old problem concerning “primitive sets””
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent web sources report that Scientific American covered the story of 23-year-old Liam Price using GPT-5.4 Pro to solve a 60-year-old Erdős problem regarding primitive sets.
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web search NEUTRAL — Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. He’s 23 years old and has no advanced mathematics training.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-wit…
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web search NEUTRAL — As reported by Scientific American, 23-year-old amateur mathematics enthusiast Liam Price used ChatGPT-5.4 Pro to resolve a “primitive set” problem that had remained unsolved since the early 1960s.
https://www.storyboard18.com/brand-makers/chatgpt-cracks-60-…
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web search NEUTRAL — Erdős problem #1196 concerns primitive sets and a weighted sum bound, not a generic “AI solved math” stunt. The visible evidence chain is public: Price’s post, mathematician commentary, an 8-page note…
https://novaknown.com/2026/04/27/erdos-problem-ai-new-move/
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““2025 was the year when AI really started being useful for many different tasks,” he told Quanta Magazine.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the search results to support this claim.
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“In March 2026, at a conference at UCLA’s Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics titled “Accelerating Math and Theoretical Physics with AI,” Tao declared that current models are now “ready for prime time,””
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found in the search results to support this claim. Furthermore, the date mentioned (March 2026) is in the future relative to the current date provided in other evidence (2024/2025).
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.