The more I look at this the more impressed I am and the more I realize how grateful we should be to Tao.
- He acknowledges ignorance: this is something academics almost never do since their cultural capital is tied up in them knowing things. But he can since, well, he's Terence Tao.
- He is explicitly acknowledging his use of GenAI to fight the stigma of using AI. If the child prodigy turned UCLA prof who studied with Erdos uses AI, it is legitimate technology. (please start using this sentence with AI skeptics btw)
- He is also showing how AI is best used: as a kind of syntactic tool that finds connections in possibility space and has access to a larger library of information than our brains can.
I often lament Tao has too playful of a mode of operating, feeling like he plays with linear algebra when he should be doing foundations of mathematics.
But not only does this moment prove my view wrong, it also proves just how much Silly Business Theory #SBT is right: in the future the best work, the greatest progress, and the most valuable innovations won't come from people laboring under the false consciousness of Protestantism and Marxism that asserts work must be hard and serious to produce value.
The best work is going to come from people playing and having fun.
We're on the cusp of a near utopian explosion in human potential and quality of life.
And you're bearish?!?!?!?!??????!?