09/25/2026
Historians of mathematics might look back at the past month as a critical moment in our field. In the whirlwind of news and opinions, we've gathered some of the key moments, resources, and reactions to the developments in AI and mathematics.
- In the first few weeks of September, there was the controversy surrounding OpenAI’s claim (https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/) that their internal models had solved the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem. Here is our statement: https://www.newton.ac.uk/news/ini-news/ai-in-mathematics-and-the-navier-stokes-problem/.
- In the days that followed, 27 Fields Medallists signed an open letter (https://mathandai.org/) articulating “A severe misalignment of AI in mathematics.” This has since been endorsed by 8,000 mathematical scientists. One notable name missing from the list is Timothy Gowers, who published a thoughtful essay on why he didn’t sign (https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/why-i-didnt-sign-the-fields-medallists-letter/).
- At the Heidelberg Laureate forum, a panel discussion with Michael Harris, Peter Scholze, Jacob Tsimerman, and Geordie Williamson articulated some of the diverse viewpoints in the maths community (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7_d_sgui6o).
-42 Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society (including our Director, Ulrike Tillmann) wrote to its president to express their “extreme concern about the pace of development of AI.” (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-xOkPeHmDEdRigT2YcP2nLfTB56yOn4FFbBfVUIXCUE/edit?tab=t.0)
- Grant Sanderson wrote an influential guest post on Terrence Tao’s blog about how we need to better celebrate “motivated explanations” rather than just proofs (https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/if-math-is-more-than-proof-we-need-to-better-celebrate-the-rest-of-it/).
- Last week the Fields Institute in Toronto held the first of five sessions (https://www.fields.utoronto.ca/activities/26-27/Leiden) for the community to engage with the Leiden Declaration (https://leidendeclaration.ai/) .
- An advisory group on maths and AI (https://agmai.org/) was formed with the support of the Institute for Advanced Study to help AI labs communicate new results with the mathematical community. The group includes our director, Ulrike Tillmann. Martin Hairer wrote a blog post about why he joined the group (https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/09/22/why-i-agreed-to-join-agmai/).
-A range of websites and initiatives have formed to help mathematical scientists make sense of the changes AI will bring to the field:
Proof and prompts (https://proofsandprompts.com/) - “A blog written by mathematicians, for mathematicians, where people can think aloud about how these tools are changing mathematical practice.”
AI.MATH (https://ai.math.ms/en/) - An initiative which presents “draft positions on the future of mathematical research and mathematics degree programmes in the age of AI, alongside questions and possible answers.”
This is a quickly-evolving story and will surely develop further over the coming weeks and months.
What did we miss?
