Quoting Terence Tao

AI-assisted competition could make mathematicians less willing to share promising work early. In the passage selected by Simon Willison, mathematician Terence Tao warns that even a rumor of progress can attract enough competing AI effort to overtake the original project. The incentive described is straightforward: sharing a direction may expose researchers to being beaten to its result, encouraging secrecy. Willison's selection presents a warning about research incentives, rather than evidence that mathematicians have already abandoned open collaboration.

“We have now seen that even the rumor of someone working on a problem can trigger a massive amount of AI-powered effort to flatten it before the original research project has time to reach its full potential.”

Terence Tao

“The incentives may now be pointing in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community, which would reverse centuries of traditions of open science and do serious long-term damage to the future of the field.”

Terence Tao