OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a Stanford audience that mathematicians moved from panic to acceptance within days of OpenAI’s math results, first telling grad students to switch majors and then deciding AI could give them a “different but hopefully better” career. But OpenAI’s September claim that its models solved the Navier-Stokes equations drew complaints that the proof came without its reasoning, leaving humans to check it. Later, over 700 academics backed a letter that pushed OpenAI to drop its sponsorship of an AI-friendly Caltech “mathathon.” UCLA mathematician Terence Tao said the field’s “romantic era” has ended because top researchers now spend their time verifying AI’s work, and that “some things are being lost.”
