25 Fields Medalists declare the goals of AI companies and mathematics severely misaligned

Terence Tao published 'A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics' (Sept 11), presenting a declaration co-signed by 25 Fields Medalists (Deligne, Scholze, Villani, Viazovska and others; open signatures at mathandai.org). Core claims: 'the push by AI companies to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics'; solutions are 'only a tool and proxy' for conceptual understanding; mass-produced true/false statements 'could destroy fertile ground'; rushed announcements raise 'severe attribution and plagiarism questions.' Tao is not anti-AI, but outcomes 'will in large part be determined by the decisions of the humans in control.'

The research community's first coordinated pushback against benchmark-driven math AI, landing the same week as Anthropic's FLT formalization and coverage of mathematicians' objections to OpenAI's methods. For evaluation teams: math benchmarks are contested territory — expect community norms (attribution, writeup requirements) to start gating how AI math results can be claimed; treat 'solved famous problem' announcements as needing community-verifiable artifacts.