Terence Tao is the best mathematician in the world. He has recognized that he is using AI to solve one of the Millennium Problems

Stating outright which person is the best in the world at something is risky. If we stick to cutting-edge research in the field of mathematics the German Peter Scholze, the British James Maynard or the Chinese-American Yitang Zhang, among other researchers, are usually considered the most capable living mathematicians. However, in the scientific community there is an almost unanimous consensus that Terence Tao, who has dual Australian and American nationality, is the authentic “Mozart of mathematics.”

His prestige has been earned hard. He won the Fields Medal, which is often considered the Nobel Prize in mathematicsin 2006, when he was 31 years old. And he was awarded it for his contributions in three fundamental areas: number theory, partial differential equations and harmonic analysis. However, the Fields Medal committee especially highlighted his ability to connect areas that most mathematicians considered isolated.

In any case, this is not all. Tao is often admired for his versatility. Many elite mathematicians specialize in a specific field, but this scientist has produced cutting-edge work in combinatorics and compressed detection, in addition to the three areas for which he received the Fields Medal. And, furthermore, he has earned a reputation as a generous researcher who works very well in a team and is always willing to adopt new technologies to address the greatest mathematical challenges.

AI is an essential tool in mathematics for Terence Tao

Dwarkesh Patel, an Indian-American content creator specializing in technology and artificial intelligence (IA) who has established himself as one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley thanks to his interviews with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Ilya Sutskever and Demis Hassabis, published just a few days ago a very interesting conversation with Terence Tao. And AI has been the absolute protagonist of a dialogue in which this mathematician has enthusiastically defended the role that this technology already has as a “trusted co-author” in research in the area of ​​mathematics.

In October 2024 Meta AIMeta’s AI, managed to generalize the Lyapunov function. Russian mathematician Aleksander Lyapunov proposed the concept of the function that bears his name in 1892. His work is a very important tool in the study of dynamical systems, but mathematicians have struggled since then to find a general method that would allow them to identify Lyapunov functions. And they were not successful. However, Meta AI has had it. This is just one example that clearly illustrates the capacity that AI already has when it comes to facing some mathematical challenges.

Terence Tao does not believe that AI will end up replacing researchers; argues that it is actually a very valuable tool that allows mathematicians to leave behind individual research and collaborate on much larger and more ambitious projects. And he leads by example. In fact, you have introduced Lean into your daily workflow. This tool is a proof assistant and programming language designed to verify mathematical reasoning and verify that it is completely correct. Tao is currently one of the biggest proponents of Lean within the scientific community.

“I hope that the AI ​​of 2026, when used correctly, will be a trusted co-author in research in mathematics. And in many other fields as well,” defends Terence Tao. He is currently using this technology to confront some of the biggest math challenges there aresuch as the Collatz conjecture or the Navier-Stokes equations. The latter give shape to one of the Millennium Problems and they seek, broadly speaking, to understand how fluids behave. Interestingly, these equations are constantly used to predict the weather or design airplanes, among many other applications, but we still don’t understand precisely how they work. Terence Tao and AI are one of our best assets when it comes to definitively solving this enigma.

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More information | Dwarkesh Patel

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