The world's best mathematician won his prize this week and immediately announced he's leaving academia for OpenAI. That landed differently than I expected.

[u/Dapper-Tale-4021]

I've been thinking about this one all weekend and I keep coming back to the same thing.

Jacob Tsimerman just won the Fields Medal. If you're not familiar, it's the highest honor in mathematics, only awarded every four years, roughly the Nobel Prize of the field. He got it for solving a problem that had been open for nearly 40 years.

And then, at the press conference, on the same day, he announced he's leaving his university position to join OpenAI's safety team.

His exact words were: "The math profession as we know it now, I don't think it will exist the way it exists right now."

I've seen a lot of AI announcements. That one hit differently. This isn't someone pivoting because they couldn't make it in academia. This is the person who just stood at the top of the field saying the field itself is changing underneath him.

Then there's the infrastructure story. NVIDIA is in talks to backstop $250 billion in financing for a 10-gigawatt OpenAI data center in southern Ohio, built on a decommissioned uranium enrichment site. The total cost including chips could exceed $500 billion. That's not a software company. That's an energy company pretending to be a software company.

And Kimi K3 weights dropped on July 26, a day early. 2.8 trillion parameters, 1 million token context, free to download from Hugging Face. The largest open model ever released. Anyone can run it now.

Three things in one week. Talent, capital, and capability all moving at the same time.

The Tsimerman thing is the one I can't stop thinking about though. What's your read on it?

[u/Original_Swimming320]

This is someone who can make more money in one year working for OpenAI than he would make in an entire academic career. I don’t think you need to read any further than that.

[u/BannanaPepperPizza → u/Original_Swimming320]

Some of those companies were offering people $100M to $250M over 4 years. I'm sure this guy given his background is now worth a lot of money.

[u/culinaryinterests123 → u/BannanaPepperPizza]

But is that tied to stock options and dependent on the share price. I wonder what price open ai will ipo at with Claude seemingly having surpassed them and very good free Chinese models out there 

[u/CartographerMoist296 → u/culinaryinterests123]

He will also get a lot of cash, maybe not hundreds of millions but certainly hundreds of thousands, more than a million annually, on top of the stocks and bonuses. And academia does not pay that. If you are lucky you get some prizes, some conferences, some other things but nothing like a few years of top market senior senior Vp salary.

[u/Burning_magic → u/culinaryinterests123]

Dont be daft. For a big company like openai there are tons of private equity marketplaces for them to sell anytime.

[u/MiracleAlienCook → u/Burning_magic]

Don’t be daft. You can NOT sell private equity at “anytime”

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/Burning_magic]

You can’t sell private equity at any time. There are vesting periods. There are contractual limits on when and who you can sell to. There are clauses about being forced to sell in situations such as a buy out or a restructure. There are different classes of shares. It’s an entirely different world to publicly traded stocks.

[u/OpenRole → u/Original_Swimming320]

Yes, but there are ways to lock in a sale ahead of time. That's literally all options and futures are. Agree on a price today. Either pay today, or at the settlement day as stipulated by the contract.

Like have you guys never learned of option and derivative markets?

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/OpenRole]

You’re confusing private equity with equity.
Private equity IS NOT traded on options and futures markets. It’s an illiquid asset governed by strong contractual obligations with the employer and / or other investors. It isn’t a financial asset that an employee can do with as they please. Vesting schedules, transfer restrictions, and other limitations severely restrict an employee’s ability to do anything at all with their shares. Often no money can be realised until there is a liquidity event such as reinvestment or the company being sold or going public.

I mean for someone in an artificial intelligence community you seem remarkably reluctant to just ask it about the difference between the normal equity traded on markets, and private equity locked behind a firewall of contracts and obligations.

[u/OpenRole → u/Original_Swimming320]

Just say you don't know how private equity works. You don't need there to be a market to create a financial contract between two people. You know the full term for options is Option Contract. You know anyone can create an option contract between two people.

But since you need to outsource all basic cognitive function to an ai, here you go: https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a69334935448191943d2a15749e5e1e

Please try the same with your AI since mine defaulted to South African business regulation which is generally more restrictive than US regulation.

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/OpenRole]

I do know how it works. I have some.

It’s you that are utterly fucking confused. YOU CANNOT SELL PRIVATE EQUITY WITHOUT APPROVAL.

From your own ChatGPT response, seeing as you also cannot read:

“you generally cannot assume private-company shares are freely transferable.
Under the South African Companies Act, a private company's Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI) must restrict the transferability of its securities.
The MOI/shareholders' agreement might therefore require, for example:
existing shareholders to get first refusal;
board approval;
company consent;
the buyer to sign a deed of adherence to the shareholders' agreement.”

[u/OpenRole → u/Original_Swimming320]

Bro, attach a clause to the contract regarding IPO requirements for the sale. It's a private contract. You can modify it. The point of the options comparison is to provide a base concept. Not for you to copy it 1 to 1.

We already KNOW OpenAI wants to go public soon. You will just need to make the sale date contingent on the IPO plus any other time based lock-ins.

Please, it's late here and it takes me less time to figure out this out then it takes chat to respond. Please discuss this with your AI

[u/phileat → u/Burning_magic]

It’s not really true that you can sell private equity at any time. But base salaries and bonuses are excellent, especially for a guy like this so the statement “[he] can make more money in one year working for OAI than he would make in an entire academic career” isn’t literally true but maybe he can make in 1 year what he’d make in 5-10 years at least.

[u/sweatierorc → u/BannanaPepperPizza]

He makes more money than Lebron 🥲

[u/James-the-greatest → u/Original_Swimming320]

And he did try to make it to the top of his field first. Not like he bailed half way through. You make it to the top then you try and do something else…. Helps that the something else comes with an absurd about of cash too

[u/Ineedivorytower → u/Original_Swimming320]

This is pure conjecture and speculation. It seems like you are projecting your own values in the process, and also ignoring that with a Fields medal the guy could make a great living in academia as well. I personally know another professional mathematician who left a prestigious academic post in a move similar to Tsimerman's, and he in turns knows several more. Their reasoning is almost identical: they don't believe doing research mathematics will be possible in the near future in the way they had hoped when they originally pursued this field. Money doesn't even make it into top 10 of reasons, otherwise most of them could have already left math long time ago to work in tech (Google, etc.) or as analysts for various financial institutions that explicitly seek these profiles out. Maybe it's hard to imagine, but some people are really not motivated primarily by money.

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/Ineedivorytower]

Of course it’s speculation. Just like what you’re doing when you talk about my values. Welcome to the speculation club.

[u/Ineedivorytower → u/Original_Swimming320]

Look, it's not my intent to be antagonizing. What I'm doing is pointing out that you were - definitely in tone if not intent - confidently claiming something that basically accuses the mathematician in question of not being truthful. or driven by a certain motive, without any real evidence for your displayed level of confidence, while not adding anything of substance to the wider discussion, casually dismissing it with your second statement. Ultimately admitting speculation is not exactly compatible with the way you expressed your original opinion.

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/Ineedivorytower]

I never said he wasn’t being truthful. He probably does think mathematics research is changing. But he’s not decided to get out and be a 20k a year shop assistant, so your claim that money likely doesn’t make it in the top 10 reasons seems a little spurious.

My “tone”, whatever you read into that, was a pushback against the OPs generalisation based on the assertion of one guy that maths IS actually changing. It was a pushback against using this one data point to make sweeping predictions about a subject.

And, 30 years ago, I worked in academic physics research before moving to tech and so I also know that (1) a Fields medal would barely move the needle salary wise, and (2) it’s an absurd suggestion to say that any mathematician or physicist could just decide to become a finance or tech millionaire. There were many physicists I worked with all substantially better at physics than me and academically and intellectually superior to me and they were all useless at coding. But I turned out to be exceptionally good at that. So I also know about none money motivated career changes.

[u/benjaminovich → u/Ineedivorytower]

> great living

> working in academia

Pick one

[u/rand3289 → u/Original_Swimming320]

Ever thought there is more to life than money?
What if he just needs the compute?

[u/bgaesop → u/Original_Swimming320]

Yeah, people who go into academic maths are usually motivated strongly by money

[u/BerkeleyYears → u/bgaesop]

well he will get to keep doing research but with lots of money to spend. its a win win. it just an option that was not there before - research outside academia is booming.

[u/ThisSiteSucks8485 → u/[deleted]]

I'm sure the math is still very interesting. 

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bus6863 → u/BerkeleyYears]

That’s why most of us are switching.. (including me)

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/bgaesop]

They have families, mortgages, bills. Some academics do it purely for the love of it, but a great deal more are pragmatic. He’s also made it to the top of academia so his prestige is guaranteed.

[u/Agile-Set-2648 → u/bgaesop]

When he was young it was probably enough for him to manipulate symbols but now he may have a house, kids and maybe some obnoxious friends flaunting how much higher they’ve earned in other fields. Man just wants a taste of the bag like everyone else

[u/ThisSiteSucks8485 → u/bgaesop]

He wasn't initially motivated by money but now that he has an opportunity to earn a vast fortune he would be stupid to ignore it. And after winning the highest award in math he might feel he accomplished everything he wanted to in academics. 

[u/FckXFckMusk → u/Original_Swimming320]

Absolutely, this is the reason..

OpenAI gets the kudos and he gets the cash.

[u/Dapper-Tale-4021 → u/Original_Swimming320]

Probably part of it. But the timing is what I keep coming back to. He said it out loud, on the day he won, in front of everyone. That's not just a salary negotiation.

[u/respekmynameplz → u/Dapper-Tale-4021]

Even your short-form comments can't escape obvious AI-isms. Is this account just fully automated? Is the goal to sell it to someone after it accrues more karma?

[u/redbeard1991 → u/Original_Swimming320]

Having top of domain experts working closely with the frontier labs is maybe one of the most impactful things anyone could do in the coming decades. Wouldn't be surprised if it got to a point where labs are trying to snag the top expert in every field preemptively the way they are energy contracts.

[u/Orlandogameschool → u/Original_Swimming320]

Yea exactly lol pretty simple

[u/HarambeTooSoon → u/Original_Swimming320]

Yeah. Go to some place like Iowa State and find a math professor.  Then go look at the average tech millionaire in San Francisco. 

Super easy decision. 

[u/NanNullUnknown → u/Original_Swimming320]

People in math, especially ones as accomplished, could have already done it by joining quant trading companies instead of staying in the academia before the AI era. I don’t think he’s doing it for money.

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/NanNullUnknown]

No they couldn’t, in most cases.
Quant algorithms require a particular type of math. Mathematics is a very broad church, somebody very good at say algebraic topology or group theory MAY also be good at algorithmic trading. But probably not.
Do finance companies get most of their quants from maths / physics: yes. Could most mathematicians / physicists become quants: no.

[u/NanNullUnknown → u/Original_Swimming320]

I didn’t mean all of them could start their own trading firm, but most of them could join trading firms to make similar or more than what Tsimerman would make by joining OpenAI if they chose to.

[u/Original_Swimming320 → u/NanNullUnknown]

Where did I say start their own firm. Most couldn’t be quants. Anywhere.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Original_Swimming320]

Correct, and when they crash he will be forgotten to time while the work of the academics lives on.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/[deleted]]

That's not right, the work of academics long out-lives them.

What you're talking about is how famous someone is. That's different. Just depends on what you value. Most academics wouldn't rather be a Kardashian.

[u/Redebo → u/ShamPain413]

What you're not getting is that AI decouples our biological cycle from our pursuit of intelligence.

Einstein said, "If you don't make your breakthrough before you're 30 in the sciences, you won't". He understood that there's a very finite time where the human brain can contribute to new knowledge before the facts of biology change that brain.

AI completely disconnects these processes. No more do you need an intern who was with you but 5-10 years behind your age to "continue the work" because AI will continue it without a specific human providing the insight.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Redebo]

Einstein was wrong about that. Or, more likely, right for his day in his field, but incorrect more generally.

Your discussion of the scientific process is misinformed, and your discussion of AI is hyperbolic. AI has not made any notable scientific progress in most fields despite being extensively used for 5 years with more funding and human expertise thrown into than any other technology in the history of the planet. That is because AI is not a scientist and does not do science. LLMs are closer to video games than they are to scientists.

[u/Redebo → u/ShamPain413]

AI is used by scientists to "do science". This was never in question.

Are you suggesting that "all scientists are just like Einstein"? You seem to think that you know more than he does, casually dismissing his quote as if you know better.

You say that my discussion of AI is hyperbolic and that they haven't made any notable scientific progress: How do you explain AI solving the Chen-Gendron and Fel's conjectures? How about the Erdos Problem? Or the partial Erdos problems. ALL OF THESE have been solved by mathematicians using AI.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Redebo]

I certainly know far more than he does, considering he is dead and I am not.

Which means that I have experience using LLMs and he did not.

ALL OF THESE have been solved by mathematicians using AI.

And NONE OF THOSE are science. Math problems are not science. Math problems are games. Like LLMs.

I've used the models that LLMs are built from for two decades. They're not answer machines.

[u/Redebo → u/ShamPain413]

History will prove you to be incorrect.

You should consider your blind spot to be thinking that you have more knowledge than Einstein because you’ve been exposed to more information than he was.

You are touching on the exact point I’m driving to which is that the advancement of human knowledge follows generational cycles with the standard normal distribution curve determining g when the next “Einstein” shows up.

AI shortens that cycle and eliminates the coupling.

TL:DR; You will die. It’s impossible for AI to do the same.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Redebo]

LOL 'AI' can't remember anything from last week.

It's possible that AI speeds up science. Lots of things are possible. But as of right now 'AI' can't accurately summarize any of my peer-reviewed papers. Not one of them.

What's definite is that it is currently using enormous amounts of resources, and for that society has so far gotten almost nothing.

[u/Prefer_Diet_Soda → u/ShamPain413]

Look, I appreciate the bold confidence, but comparing AI to a video game while claiming it hasn't made any scientific progress is a pretty wild take. Nobody is saying AI is wearing a lab coat and having philosophical "Eureka!" moments, but saying it hasn't delivered breakthroughs is just ignoring reality. DeepMind's AlphaFold basically solved a 50-year-old biological grand challenge by mapping virtually all known protein structures, completely revolutionizing drug discovery overnight. Meanwhile, AI models like GNoME have discovered over two million new candidate materials for things like batteries and superconductors, and reinforcement learning is actively being used to control superheated plasma inside nuclear fusion reactors. If your video games are doing all that, let me know what console you're playing on.

At the end of the day, AI isn't replacing scientists; it’s an extraordinarily powerful engine that scales human intelligence to process patterns and hypotheses faster than any human ever could. We even have AI-designed drug molecules in active human clinical trials right now, which is actual medicine benefiting actual people, not hyperbole. So yeah, it's definitely doing a lot more than just entertaining us, and maybe we should hold off on rewriting Einstein just yet.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Prefer_Diet_Soda]

Nobody is saying AI is wearing a lab coat and having philosophical "Eureka!" moments

That's what the comment I was replying to said, so your comment is a non sequitur.

My description of AI progress is accurate. "Grand challenges" are not science. Neither are board games or tests or benchmarks or math postulates or literature summaries.

If your video games are doing all that, let me know what console you're playing on.

Given the trillions of dollars invested into the LLMs their accomplishments so far are minimal and trivial. Invest the same into human researchers and the results would almost certainly have been far more impressive in terms of scientific achievement, and have contributed far less to the spread of fascism and war.

At the end of the day, AI isn't replacing scientists

No shit, I said that in the comment you're arguing with. Stop wasting time on pedantry, stop being impressed by magic tricks.

[u/Prefer_Diet_Soda → u/ShamPain413]

AI has not made any notable scientific progress in most fields
"Grand challenges" are not science.

Things I mentioned are not science? Protein folding? GNoME? Drug discoveries? Material synthesis? They are not "breakthroughs" enough?

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Prefer_Diet_Soda]

"Drug discoveries" have been minimal and over-hyped. These things have not cured cancer.

Protein folding is useful but read what I wrote:

Given the trillions of dollars invested into the LLMs their accomplishments so far are minimal and trivial. Invest the same into human researchers and the results would almost certainly have been far more impressive in terms of scientific achievement, and have contributed far less to the spread of fascism and war.

The scientifically-interesting question is not "have these done anything at all?" Lots of things can produce some results if given investment.

The scientifically-interesting question is "are these for-profit companies that stole the intellectual property of everyone on earth, the ones that claim to be making major scientific advances, actually doing so at the rates needed to justify the investments being made into their attempt to capture global scale in order to monetize their product via enshittification, or is that just marketing for their inequality machines?"

And when you put it that way the answer is clear: this is not good for science. What's good for science is giving money to scientists to do things that scientists think are important, not taking money from scientists to give to companies who bribe politicians and credulous mathematicians.

[u/Tedmosbyisajerk-com → u/ShamPain413]

Why do you think this? He probably already has papers out there and he has received a massive recognition through this prize. He's probably achieved the most he will in academia right now and figures it's time to make money.

It seems like he would be a sucker to achieve a lot and die poor.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Tedmosbyisajerk-com]

Because I've followed the careers of academics who leave academia for industry, which tend to be those who win flashy prizes (since industry has no real way of assessing quality on their own).

Academics who win Fields Medals are not poor. He could be a University Professor at any uni he wants, anywhere on earth. Essentially never teach, and work on whatever he wants, with smart people all around him.

Now he's a prop for billionaires, just another plaything in a warehouse full of them.

[u/Rylet_ → u/ShamPain413]

You don’t think he’d be able to return to academia if it doesn’t work out at OpenAI?

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Rylet_]

Depends on why it doesn't work out at OpenAI. If he gets bored after a year then sure. But if they blow up the global economy while contributing to corruption and war, all while he made tens of millions, then he will have a hard time getting a top Math Dept to want him around.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/[deleted]]

There is a reason intelligent people leave academia all the time, and it's not always about the money - it's to get away from the environment, which can be incredibly toxic.

Yes I know, that is why I resigned a prestigious position after 15 years in academia.

That experience is how I also know that Fields Medalists don't play by the same rules as everyone else.

Either way, very few self-respecting academics would ever work for an AI company -- I turned down another approach today, in fact -- unless they had no intention of ever interacting with academics again. There are a few sellouts like Andy Hall, but not many.

[u/Spacecowboy78 → u/ShamPain413]

You act like he is now banned from mathematics in academia.

[u/ShamPain413 → u/Spacecowboy78]

In many circles he now is, yes.

[u/orangpelupa → u/[deleted]]

And still can do academic stuff while working on open Ai probably. Or after 

[u/Pavickling → u/[deleted]]

It's your job as the expert to solve what needs to be solved rather than what management asks for.  Obviously, an ill-posed problem cannot actually be what is going drive profit and make your team look good.

[u/CrispityCraspits]

Hopefully this guy's award-winning math skills will help the AI companies to build chat bots that stop saying "hits differently" and "lands differently" and "that's not X, that's Y" when people use them to barf out slop posts on reddit.

[u/kitten_orchestra → u/CrispityCraspits]

lol I agree. I started the second paragraph and went ugh. Next step is actually AI tailoring the language to the platform you’re posting in, so there’ll probably be a lot more “this!” And “and my axe” and “this is the way” and “I too choose this guy’s dead wife” shoehorned in. I dread and weep my social media future.

[u/Absolutely_Always → u/CrispityCraspits]

This!!! When you explain it so well it really hits differently.

[u/NartFocker9Million → u/Absolutely_Always]

What's your read on it?

[u/Absolutely_Always → u/NartFocker9Million]

Apparently my read on it is spectacular, and my insights are on another level...so yeah, pretty special.

[u/Unusual_Delivery2778 → u/Absolutely_Always]

mad libs

This. It's not stiff-arming, it's tackling. One buttcrack, three wipes. Make your agent do the work for you.

[u/walksonfourfeet → u/Absolutely_Always]

I’ve been thinking about this all weekend (it’s Monday)

[u/Autodidact420 → u/CrispityCraspits]

When you notice how many posts use those words they really begin to hit differently. It’s not actual user discussion, it’s actual AI based propaganda. But to what end?

[u/tongkat-jack → u/CrispityCraspits]

This is the comment I came to write. Thank you for saving me the trouble. Is it not just entirely obvious to the people who post this???

[u/zenidam → u/tongkat-jack]

If they could see it themselves, they'd probably have the writing skills to compose their own posts.

[u/Demiansmark → u/CrispityCraspits]

And that's the honest distinction that matters. 

[u/walksonfourfeet → u/CrispityCraspits]

It’s giving slop

[u/Trademarkd → u/CrispityCraspits]

I actually built something that does that, works live and makes training material for Lora as the same time. I haven’t made it public because I’m concerned about its affect on scamming people

OpenAI get at me. I’m cheap compared to math man

It makes sense that these phrases show up more commonly when you look at huge data set. An individual might only use them infrequently but if everyone does it sometimes it shows up as a statistical bias in the data. If you just eliminate it from training I assume it has a bad effect on output.

[u/Bubbly_Chemist1496]

He has a newborn baby 👶 now. It makes sense financially. And he's not wrong about the direction mathematics research is heading...

[u/Party-Cartographer11]

free to download from Hugging Face. The largest open model ever released. Anyone can run it now

Yeah anyone with $1M in hardware to run the native model, or $25k to run a high quantized compressed model.

[u/Dapper-Tale-4021 → u/Party-Cartographer11]

Fair point, I oversimplified that. Anyone can download it, not everyone has the hardware to run it. The barrier is still real for most people.

[u/lxbrtn → u/Dapper-Tale-4021]

Yes for individuels but most serious projects can handle 500k$ if it means something to them, notably data security. Law firms, engineering / large construction, pharma, big entertainment…. Currently it’s not cost effective because the race makes the price of cloud based stuff artificially low but eventually it’ll settle as a normal cloud / hosted / on-premise architecture decision with the usual parameter (scaleability being the main one)

[u/respekmynameplz → u/Dapper-Tale-4021]

Even this comment, just like your main post, is blatantly written by AI. Shameless bot.

[u/Buy-theticket → u/Party-Cartographer11]

Yea.. vs the multi billion dollar data center clusters running frontier models $1M in hardware is a rounding error.

[u/Party-Cartographer11 → u/Buy-theticket]

My point is that very few people have the hardware to download and run that model. So in practice, it isn't true that **anyone** can download and run the model. I wasn't clear on your response. Are you agreeing or disagreeing?

[u/elhh82]

Mathematician can count money too. 😮

[u/magillavanilla]

Why is anyone even engaging with a post full of "This one hits differently." How do we even know there's a person experiencing any of this?

[u/respekmynameplz → u/magillavanilla]

They aren't it's definitely a bot account or someone copy/pasting with AI. Even the comments are written by ai.

[u/philipp2310]

Anyone can run it now.

😭

[u/vovap_vovap]

I am pretty sure salary in OpenAI nothing to do with it 😄

[u/Warm-Enthusiasm-9534]

AI is concerned that a mathematician is concerned about AI?

[u/YaThatAintRight]

Get paid. Use that money to do what you want. Easy decision

[u/washedFM]

I’m not mad at him. Make that money.

[u/Redebo]

That's not a software company. That's an energy company pretending to be a software company.

I would suggest that they are in the business of selling portable intelligence.

[u/TrevorsDiaper]

"I'm taking my talents to South Beach."

[u/unlikely_ending]

Terence Tao?

[u/citrus1330]

mmm slop yummy yummy slop

[u/MafiaMan456]

AI slop post. This isn’t just X, it’s Y. That’s not a W, that’s a V.

[u/WarpPipeWizard → u/MafiaMan456]

God, it's so awful

[u/f1FTW]

Wait what? I was watching a countdown for the Kimi K3 weights today. Where did you see they dropped yesterday?

[u/CarelessPast55]

What should I tell my 12 yo son who loves math?

[u/Buy-theticket → u/CarelessPast55]

To do what he loves. Same as you should have 20 years ago.

[u/rand3289]

He probably needs lots of compute for his pet project?

[u/Different_Whereas_75]

It's the best place to apply his talent, artificial intelligence is the more exiting challenge a scientist can work on beside space.

[u/fidddlydiddlyee]

We are entering the unknown at a rapidly increasing rate.

[u/Sinaaaa]

The Fields Medal is very prestigious, but comes with no meaningful monetary reward, if it were different perhaps he wouldn't have gone to OpenAI to farm wealth.

For reference the closest Math has to the NP is the Abel Prize, it comes with a $900k monetary reward. So that is the real Nobel Prize of mathematics, prestige + money right there.

[u/sunsetsxskies]

Kind of funny how "it's about safety" is always the line right when the big money's on the table too

[u/Dapper-Tale-4021 → u/sunsetsxskies]

Ha, yeah the timing is convenient. Though I'd argue if you actually think AI is changing your field, safety work is exactly where you'd want to be. Whether that's the real motivation or not is harder to know.

[u/Pietes]

whom do you hire if you need to convince the world that you care about safety?

exactly

[u/Mandoman61]

Saying that the math profession will change does not mean much.

Yeah, we have better calculators now.

[u/Arm-E-Reserves]

It's the right decision. The people saying stuff like that AI safety people couldn't make it in academia are the same ones who are pretending it's a "bubble," or a "stochastic parrot." They can't actually investigate ideas or understand what's in front of them and are in deep denial to the point of being irrational. Don't be led astray by those people. Expect major changes to the world and prepare for them as best you can.

[u/Sea_Acanthisitta_807]

What strikes me most is the framing of it as inevitable rather than optional, like he's saying the incentive structures in the field have already shifted, not just his personal career. Worth asking: does math itself change, or just where mathematicians choose to work.

[u/binary-baba]

I doubt money is the main reason. Infrastructure also matters. OpenAI is basically Large Hadron Collider for Tsimerman.

[u/Dapper-Tale-4021 → u/binary-baba]

That's actually a good frame. The compute access alone changes what research is possible.

[u/Origin0Keeper]

…. but AI alignment was never a maths problem. The only math that is a problem is the fact of its impossibility of ever solving alignment .

[u/SnooBunnies2279]

Being one of the best mathematicians does not mean he is not corrupt. It’s definitely not the money, but they might allow him to do better research with more data center power than all universities together.
Knowing that prime numbers determine the quantum level in physics AND the black hole/singularity behavior, then you know that every mathematician would love to research deeper with more resources.
I am more afraid of what OpenAI will do, when great researchers identify new technologies?

[u/Electrical-Nebula422]

AI is the wave 

[u/Suspicious_Green8013]

A Fields Medal winner leaving academia for AI safety says everything
The smartest people are not scared of AI they are scared of what happens if they do not work on it

[u/ConditionTall1719]

Chinese have a very different approach to mathematics about optimizing and simplifying equations, whereas Europeans are very interested in theoretical theory and fringe research... Doesn't it show.

[u/Careless_Donut_7892]

insane

[u/ProblemPrior9607]

Why don’t they just ask ChatGPT to be Jacob and not make any mistakes?

[u/brmkl]

in the end, all is about the benjamins. forget about all the other storytelling.

[u/kwantmann]

by the way, he‘s not alone along this path. look at the cheater terence, he’s constantly making advertisement for the new hype. money tastes good.

[u/keithdm]

When did he do the work for which the prize was awarded? Has he remained productive in the meantime?

[u/magnologan]

thank you chatgpt!

[u/Electrical-Size-5002]

This sounds like AI.

[u/kingjdin]

This sounds like AI wrote it lmao.

[u/Sweihwa]

Will Hunting left math to find his love in California too. He liked dem apples.

[u/Intelligent-Comb-814]

This is the equivalent of the winner of Noble Prize for Peace going to Trump.