What Terence Tao's Blog Says About AI and Mathematics

Terence Tao's blog "What's new" treats AI as a live question for mathematics rather than a settled one. As of the posts visible on the site, the discussion appears in at least three forms: a guest post asking what powerful AI models mean for mathematicians, a research post noting that recent work on the Euler and Navier–Stokes equations was obtained with the aid of large language models, and editorial notes stating that some guest posts were converted from a different file format using AI. The blog is a personal and expository site, so these are individual perspectives and observations, not institutional positions.

The guest post on AI and mathematicians

The most direct item is a guest post by Jennifer Taback, published 3 October 2026 under the categories guest blog, math.GM, and opinion, titled "What does the advent of powerful AI models mean for mathematicians like me?" The excerpt on the site describes it as a response to "a stream of articles" questioning something about AI's role — the excerpt cuts off mid-sentence, so the specific claims of those articles are not visible in the available text.

What can be said from the page evidence:

• It is framed as an opinion piece by a working mathematician, not a technical result.
• It sits in the blog's guest blog category, meaning Tao hosts it but did not necessarily write it.
• Tao's editorial note says the post "was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI," which is itself a small data point about how AI is entering ordinary scholarly workflow.

AI in actual mathematical research

The research post "On classical solutions and singularity formation in incompressible fluids" (4 October 2026, expository, math.AP) is a guest post by Diego Córdoba and Luis Martínez-Zoroa. It surveys the question of whether an initially regular fluid flow can develop a singularity in finite time, covering the Euler equations formulated in 1757 and the Navier–Stokes equations.

The relevant AI detail is explicit in the excerpt: "The recent work on Euler and Navier–Stokes obtained with the aid of large language models has brought renewed attention to this question." So the blog records AI as a contributing tool in a current, active research area — not as a replacement for the decades of mathematical work the post also credits.

How to read these posts in context

If you want to understand the blog's stance on AI and mathematics, keep three distinctions in mind:

The blog's About page describes it as "Updates on my research and expository papers, discussion of open problems, and other maths-related topics." That framing matters: AI appears here as one topic among many, discussed alongside fluid dynamics, harmonic analysis course notes, and arXiv policy.

Practical takeaways

• To follow the AI-and-mathematics thread specifically, browse the opinion and guest blog categories rather than expecting a dedicated series.
• Treat the guest posts as authored views — the bylines and Tao's bracketed notes identify who wrote what.
• The site offers a feed subscription option; the excerpt lists "Subscribe to feed" among its navigation links, which is the straightforward way to catch new posts as they appear.
• Because the excerpts available are partial, read the full posts before drawing conclusions about specific arguments, especially where a sentence is cut off.