Terence Tao taps AI for "Big Math"

Tao's endorsement of AI signals a paradigm shift from individual intuition to machine-verified collaborative research. LLMs act as "guessing machines" to filter millions of problems, leaving only high-value targets for humans, while formal verification via Lean provides the "ground truth" that LLMs lack. This robust human-AI hybrid workflow, aided by "auto-formalization," suggests a transition for mathematics toward a "Big Science" model mirroring the scale-up of physics and biology.