Terence Tao at Fields Medal Ceremony: Mathematics Faces a Century Crisis

At the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), immediately after the announcement of the 2026 Fields Medal laureates Wang Hong and Deng Yu, Terence Tao, who received the same award in 2006, delivered a talk titled "Mathematics in the Age of AI." Rather than discussing whether AI can handle mathematics, Tao proposed a working hypothesis: assume that AI will soon be able to solve a significant portion of research problems at a reasonable cost. Citing the independent benchmark First Proof, where AI systems solved 7 out of 10 problems at a publishable level, he emphasized that this allows shifting the discussion to the realm of values. Tao invoked Goodhart's law: when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric. He showed how the evolution of goals in mathematical research (problem-solving, verification, clear exposition, community acceptance, canonization) will lead to "proof indigestion"—a transition from an era of proof scarcity to an era of proof abundance. Tao called for reducing the weight of "first solution" and increasing the importance of the "digestion" stages: exposition, publication, and canonization. He endorsed the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics, which requires disclosure of AI usage, with authors bearing full responsibility for correctness. Tao's strict rule: if an author cannot clearly and expertly present the work orally, it should not be published. Tao himself acknowledged using AI to prepare slides and called for an open dialogue within the community.