Terence Tao: Maths ‘the canary in the coal mine’ on AI

Terence Tao is widely celebrated as the world’s greatest living mathematician.

He was doing university-level maths at the age of 9, won Gold at the International Mathematical Olympiad at 13 - still the youngest person to have done that - and got his PHD at age 20.

At 31 he won the Fields Medal - somewhat equivalent to a Nobel Prize for pure mathematics. He has now embarked on what some might consider the greatest challenge of his life - he’s written a book for a general audience, called Six Maths Essentials.

This provided the opportunity for Tim to interview Professor Tao.
They talked about maths, and the relevance of his kind of abstract maths on everyday life. And they also talked about AI. OpenAI recently released full or partial solutions to 372 unsolved mathematical problems, which has raised existential questions about Tao’s profession. Professor Tao says the disruption in his field might make it “the canary in the coal mine” for the disruption AI is going to create across our way of life.

Credits:
Presenter: Tim Harford
Series Producer: Tom Colls
Production Co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound Mix: James Beard
Editor: Richard Vadon