Home | Notifications | New Note | Local | Federated | Search | Logout
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz
I'm a mathematical physicist who likes explaining stuff. I'm the Maxwell Fellow of Public Engagement at the School of Mathematics and the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.
Check out my blog Azimuth! I'm also a member of the n-Category Café, a group blog on math with an emphasis on category theory. I also have a YouTube channel, full of talks about math, physics and the future.
homepage: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/
blog: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/
math blog: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/
videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy9yxdnj0yfOiMWvMa47PNw
Joined: 2026-09-03 18:53:55
7 notes, 0 following, 0 followers
Reply to @TonyVladusich@mathstodon.xyz
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-27 18:23:37)
@TonyVladusich - I think "What authorities claim as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control" is too extreme - for example, I don't think the discovery that there are many galaxies is "really just a means of social control". Foucault and some deconstructionists may want to completely explode the concept of scientific knowledge in this way. But we can be less extreme and still notice that LLM companies are using the *prestige* of mathematics to advertise their LLMs: they are not really claiming people are going to spend trillions of dollars proving new theorems with LLMs, they are saying "you'll buy our product because it's so good because it can beat the world's best mathematicians". Prestige is always connected to social control; people bow down to prestige.
Luckily, lots of mathematicians are pushing for the the board of nine to take a skeptical attitude toward OpenAI.
By the way, it's a good sign of how prestige and power works in mathematics that @Virginicus assumed the nine are all men.
Reply to @TonyVladusich@mathstodon.xyz
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-24 18:14:37)
@TonyVladusich - Unfortunately for you, the board consists of 9 highly respected mathematicians. So their reputations may get incinerated by their choice to participate, but they won't simply be brushed off by the mathematics community: they'll be taken seriously by many, at least at first.
They were smart enough to start by asking for suggestions on how to proceed. This is why I suggested that they democratize this business instead operating as self-appointed leaders.
Then mathematicians can argue it out, and maybe our opinions will have more effect.
Reply to @TonyVladusich@mathstodon.xyz
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-24 16:52:36)
@TonyVladusich - It's easy to say "fuck them!", and I agree, but it doesn't solve the problem: namely, that OpenAI is threatening simply dump 100 big AI-generated proofs on the math community. Maybe you're saying the self-appointed advisory board should just say "fuck you!" and we see what happens next. There may be opportunity, though, to get some better outcome.
Reply to @tomkalei@mathe.social
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-24 03:02:10)
@tomkalei - if OpenAI publishes 100 proofs of big theorems - verified using Lean, but not carefully written and not properly citing previous work - it'll be worse than if mathematicians have a chance to take this work, see what they think about it, and turn it into properly written mathematics before it's released.
You say "we also have the option to ignore them", but few mathematicians working on a field where the blah-di-blah conjecture is a central open question will simply "ignore" a proof or disproof, verified using Lean, of this conjecture. Some may ignore it. But others will will go on and use this new result, and those who ignore it will be left in the dust of history. Publicly available facts don't usually disappear, and boycotting a fact doesn't work well.
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-23 23:00:36)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/999167/openai-elite-mathematicians-panel
OpenAI claims to have proved 100 more big theorems. I urge all of you to fill out the form at https://agmai.org/ and politely ask the board of nine "elite mathematicians" to initiate a more democratic approach to dealing with this potential flood of AI-proved results.
Here's what I wrote in that form:
"The answer to this question is so important that it should be decided, not directly by just nine mathematicians, but in some more democratic way. You can design the structure for decision-making and perhaps keep the resulting organization from running off the rails, but the more the affected mathematicians have some say in what happens, the less unhappy they will be. There already exist democratically run organizations of mathematicians such as the AMS, LMS, and EMS that might help out here."
Reply to @mc@mathstodon.xyz
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-20 19:28:04)
@mc - The focus on big prizes and big problems is strongest in the self-proclaimed upper echelons of mathematics. Most of us working mathematicians have long ago decided not to work on those big problems, and don't have a chance of getting those big prizes. Some working mathematicians admire and respect the upper echelons, others watch them with jaded cynicism or resentment - and still others mostly ignore them because they're having too much fun doing their own math!
It's interesting to see how the rise of LLM proofs is taken differently by different kinds of mathematicians. But the media attention naturally focuses on people in the upper echelons, like Tsimerman, Tao and Gowers. So it gets a warped view of what most mathematicians think.
John Carlos Baez@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz (2026-09-03 18:48:01)
Time is much more convenient than space. It takes up less room, and it lasts longer.