25 Fields Medalists Warn AI Firms Against Using Math Problems as Benchmarks
In September 2026, Fields Medalist Terence Tao published an open letter signed by 25 Fields Medalists, criticizing AI companies for using famous unsolved math problems as benchmarks for model capabilities. The letter says such practices harm mathematics as a science and the mathematical community.
Although the letter does not name any company directly, it is widely seen as targeting OpenAI. On September 8, OpenAI announced that its internal model, running about 10,000 concurrent agents, solved the Navier-Stokes equation problem in 88 hours. The result has not been peer-reviewed and was soon disputed by mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster of New York University and Levent Alpöge of Anthropic, who accused OpenAI of racing ahead based on their unpublished research direction.
The signatories include Pierre Deligne (Fields Medal 1978), Ngô Bảo Châu (2010), and Yu Deng (2026), among 25 Fields Medalists. The letter warns that rapidly producing large numbers of true/false statements may harm the research environment instead of nurturing new ideas.
The letter also acknowledges AI's potential to enhance mathematical research, but stresses that the transmission of mathematical ideas and the human mentorship chain are at risk. The Fields Medal, awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40, is often described as the Nobel Prize of mathematics.
