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#https#more#using#math#tao#com#llms#terry#coding#llm

Discussion (37 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

apignotti•3 minutes ago
Running legacy educational Java applets, especially around math and physics, has been a longstanding popular use case of our CheerpJ Applet Runner extension, running Java bytecode in the browser via WebAssembly.

I am not sure how to feel about agents solving the problem via proper modernization. It's certainly positive that students will be able to interact with this content in a modern and more accessible way, but the educational use case for our product, although not commercially important, has always been a source of pride.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cheerpj-applet-runn...

semiquaver•5 minutes ago
There is infinite latent demand for software, most especially outside the traditionally software-focused spaces. If LLMs stopped improving today it would take us 10 years to catch up to the new software-writing abilities that have become available. This is a great illustration of that fact.
luciana1u•about 3 hours ago
Terry Tao using coding agents to build apps means we're one step away from a Fields Medalist asking an LLM why his Docker container won't start, just like the rest of us.
larme•about 2 hours ago
Before LLM there has already been Fields medalist[0] who creates professional software[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Hairer

[1]: https://www.hairersoft.com/

skinfaxi•about 2 hours ago
This is a very humbling thought, thank you.
dist-epoch•about 1 hour ago
I'm waiting for the reverse, coding agents asking Terry Tao if the proof they plan working on is worthy of a Fields Medal
recursivedoubts•about 1 hour ago
Building visualizations with LLMs has been a major boost for my CS classes:

https://htmx.org/essays/universities-and-ai/#demos-visualiza...

Many visualizations that I have always wanted but just didn't have the time to build, I now have.

To give an example, I wanted a simplified 8-bit computer to complement the 16-bit teaching computer I use and designed this in a few days with the help of claude:

https://bdp.cs.montana.edu/

wffurr•about 3 hours ago
Nice balanced perspective there at the end:

"as such [LLM-coded interactive] supplements are not mission-critical to the core of the paper, I again feel that the downside risk of using guided interaction with LLM agents to generate such visualizations is acceptable."

It's a tool. Good for some things but not others and generally not to be trusted.

an0malous•about 1 hour ago
> and generally not to be trusted

There are many AI bulls who adamantly disagree and cite Tao’s statements about LLMs for mathematical proofs as an example of how advanced and autonomous these systems already are

irishcoffee•23 minutes ago
Statistical gradient descent token vomiter. We can all say it together. Nothing about this is advanced or autonomous.
mxkopy•13 minutes ago
I mean just from the above quote it’s clear he doesn’t trust them for “mission-critical” tasks. And I doubt LLms have evolved significantly from their stochastic parrot nature over the last few years
alansaber•about 2 hours ago
I always enjoy these "domain expert has fun using AI to do something in their domain" articles. But it's always a hobby project, never something serious.
swatcoder•2 minutes ago
[delayed]
rsfern•about 1 hour ago
Terry Tao has actually been one of the more prominent voices in the math community exploring AI for cutting edge mathematical discovery. This particular post is a bit softer but he has also written a lot about using AI assistance for serious core research

Nov 2025: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/tag/artificial-intelligence/

https://academy.openai.com/public/blogs/terence-tao-ai-is-re...

jebarker•about 1 hour ago
What makes this a hobby project? He’s a university professor so developing teaching material is part of his job.
indymike•5 minutes ago
That is how it starts, trust is built on hobby projects.
dboreham•about 1 hour ago
Serious things tend to be long and tedious and potentially full of proprietary information.
cma•about 1 hour ago
But he's also using AI for formally verified math and for ideas in solving math problems. The part about it being ok because it is a supplement just means ok that these aren't formally verified and may have bugs.
koe123•about 2 hours ago
I am far from a mathematician but I am excited by the possibilities of using AI for generating more math. Math in my mind exists purely in the world of forms, and cannot be appropriated for profit, but is downstream to everything else. I am keen to see what this enables.
lioeters•30 minutes ago
It may be a question of perspective, but in my mind mathematics is upstream to everything else, including physics, biology, etc. And it doesn't just exist in the human mind or the "world of forms", as in Platon's realm of ideas. It's more fundamental than that, closer to the foundation from which all existence emerges. Our reality is like a shadow of a shadow, a fleeting illusion, compared to the eternal reality that gives birth to all lesser realities.

As for profit, there's a reason why governments and AI companies are hiring philosophers and mathematicians. It's not to make the world a better place for everyone, or to encourage the progress of human knowledge; but to gain cutting-edge advantages over their competitors. Same reason why theoretical physicists were prized before/during the Second World War.

muragekibicho•about 3 hours ago
The article's awkward opening statement proves it wasn't written by AI.

I have been interested in machine-assisted ways to do and teach mathematics from as far back as 1999, when I started coding several applets in Java 1.0, both for my complex analysis and linear algebra courses, to visualize various mathematical objects I was interested in (such as honeycombs or Besicovitch sets).

kccqzy•about 1 hour ago
It’s very much Terrence Tao style. His style is having long sentences that could have been broken down into shorter sentences but he chose not to. It doesn’t really affect reading comprehension.
vatsachak•about 2 hours ago
Using LLMs to generate dashboards is probably their most productive use case
jdw64•about 2 hours ago
His website using mathematical knowledge is refreshing. There's a small UI bug, but personally, I wish more educational materials were this rich in audiovisual content.
jgalt212•about 3 hours ago
The more Terry talks about AI, the more I'm starting to feel like Terry may have some undisclosed conflicts of interest.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mathematics/comments/1tryyw7/terenc...

sega_sai•about 3 hours ago
When it comes to coding, non-programmers do not have to be in a defensive position worried that their job is under risk, instead they just see a great tool that saves them time, especially doing boring coding like dashboards, visualizations, interactive web-pages, or doing experiments that they otherwise would not have time for.
simonw•about 2 hours ago
A lot of mathematicians are worried: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/mathematicians-w...
jdright•about 2 hours ago
Mathematicians are a kind of programmers, the original ones.
lowsong•about 2 hours ago
"When it comes to a field I'm not an expert in, AI is a great tool."

Every time.

azan_•about 1 hour ago
Tao is not an expert in math research? That's a really high bar then.
alansaber•about 2 hours ago
Yes, because AI gets the "shape" of something right. If you don't know the field you don't notice the pockmarked surface.
lagrange77•about 2 hours ago
I think the opposite is true.
nmfisher•about 3 hours ago
Or he just finds it an incredible time-saving tool to help him do more maths.
perching_aix•about 3 hours ago
The well-known shadowy bias and conflict of interest of "I just enjoy experimenting with this new thing".
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suwapat•about 2 hours ago
LLM will do very good job in pure mathematics since it don't need the senses to logically understand/conclude a given topic.