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Quanta Magazine ·Future-gazing

How Terry Tao Became an Evangelist for AI in Math

by Kevin Hartnett

Published 2026-06-08 15:17:08+00:00

What happens to the solitary act of discovery when a computer allows a thousand people to work together?

0:00 / 29:45 · Narrator Gacrux

Context

Terry Tao has long been the archetype of the solitary mathematical genius, but a shift is underway in how the world’s most difficult problems get solved. This piece from 8 June 2026 follows Tao’s transition from a solo practitioner to an architect of massive, machine-verified collaborations. It explores a move toward experimental mathematics that looks less like a quiet library and more like a high-energy physics lab. The story asks what happens to the process of discovery when the human mind begins to partner with a truth machine.

Show notes

A chronicle of Fields Medalist Terry Tao’s shift from solitary research toward large-scale collaboration and computer-verified proofs. The adoption of the Lean interactive proof system and the coordination of decentralized, open-source projects serve as a model for formalizing complex conjectures. This emerging experimental approach to the field integrates human intuition with the guarantees of correctness provided by automated formal verification.

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