Fields Medal winner Terence Tao says AI is changing how mathematicians work, not by replacing proof, but by lowering the friction on experimentation and collaboration. The conversation, recorded at an OpenAI Forum event with IPAM in March 2026, pairs Tao with OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen, who frames the company's research agenda around building tools that produce scientific breakthroughs at scale.
What makes this worth watching in full is Tao's specificity. He is not speaking in generalities about AI potential. He is describing how working mathematicians actually use these tools to explore problem spaces faster, surface connections across subfields, and coordinate on problems too large for small teams. That operational detail is rare from someone at his level.
The underlying question the video forces is whether AI accelerates mathematics or just accelerates the parts that were never the hard parts. Tao and Chen do not fully resolve this tension, which is exactly why the conversation is worth your time.
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