[YeGoblynQueenne]

I should really know better than to say something like that for a figure as revered as Terry Tao, but, he has taken OpenAI's money to shoot an advert for them [1] and, sorry but I can't believe he is entirely unbiased; or very unbiased for that.

_____________________

[1] https://youtu.be/cdflu9ZXZGE?si=f1xi65r7kZM8s1JI

[fxwin]

I think it helps his credibility that he has been working with and speaking positively about AI assisted mathematics (especially for formalizing proofs) for over a year now . I'm sure he isn't unbiased, but as far as spokespeople in the AI space are concerned I'd count him among the less biased ones.

[pfortuny]

I do not know about this but, to be honest, he (or his Dpt, or whatever) has the money and connections to try the hidden-behind-closed-doors stuff.

We mere mortals (I am a prof. of Maths at Uni) do not.

[fn-mote]

I won’t downvote this thread but … the first paragraph of the article explains how Tao won some $3m award. Unless the going rate for AI-shilling is much higher than I can believe, the amount of money just is not going to be enough to get a world-class figure to suddenly sell out. If you saw him selling his morals regularly in the past, ok I’ll listen to the evidence. But suddenly now? After so long writing (essentially for free) and building community? Doesn’t make sense.

[nilkn]

I don't think Terence Tao sold out. However, just looking at it from OpenAI's perspective, this kind of advertising is almost certainly worth at least one order of magnitude more than $3M to the company.

[Quarrel]

I'm a Terence Tao fan, but yes, OpenAI should at the very least just be telling him to go crazy with the latest models on our dime.

[pfortuny]

No, I am not saying he has sold out: but he has the money and the contacts to see the insider-only version.

Just that. Tell my Uni to pay me 200€/month for tokens. They are just going to laugh it out.

[rowanG077]

This is my view as well. It's not like it's weird for people to get paid for things they genuinely believe in even if they were nor paid.

[alfiedotwtf]

Maybe he’s just friggen excited about the possibilities. I’m a developer by day, and even with the pending doom of our whole craft, I’M EXCITED about what AI not only has already done for me but what I’m going to be able to do with it in the future.

Here’s one of the smarted guys who’s walked the earth, and out of his historical peers, he’ll be part of the first generation with big brains AND to have tools to give literal superhuman abilities.

Come on… TT doesn’t care about a little money for a biased plug. He could literally knock on the doors of Renascence Technologies and walk in with a straight face say “give me 1% of the Medallion Fund, I start today, an office with a nice window if possible”. And it would still come off charming like he always is.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Thanks for not downvoting the thread I guess, but I don't think that's how it works. If you take someone's money to say their product is great, even if you genuinely believe it, you shouldn't be trusted. There is such a thing as conflicts of interest after all and it is not measured by the amount of interest; not least because it's hard to know what that means. It suffices that there is interest.

[fragmede]

A $100,000 investment into Anthropic or OpenAI a few years ago would be worth a couple hundred million today, so $3m is ~nothing in that scheme of things.

[simianwords]

"Tao has sold out to the AI grifters to prop up the AI hype bubble" is not a take I expected to see.

I think we can all be a bit grounded and understand reality as we see it -- one of the smartest living mathematicians is using an important invention. Not necessary to believe in any conspiracy theory.

[CamperBob2]

Historically it's a little irregular for someone like that to get involved commercially at this level, but the unfortunate reality is that academic research at all levels is facing a drastic loss of funding and political support right now. They are going to have to do some things that they haven't had to do before, just to survive.

If that means that researchers like Tao have to work as consultants or adjuncts to OpenAI or other model developers, well... that's what the American people voted for when they elected Trump.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> "Tao has sold out to the AI grifters to prop up the AI hype bubble" is not a take I expected to see.

To clarify there was nothing like that in my comment above.

[keybored]

We don’t even need to know addition to understand quid pro quo. (edit Okay we may have to understand both plus and minus here. But that’s it.)

[chipdale]

Terry has always been curious & temperedly bullish on LLMs long before OpenAI gave him any money.

Quid pro quo or not, he got paid to say what he's already been saying for the last few years.

[discreteevent]

This could be true but, no matter what, a streetwise person would never trust him after he has taken the money. If he wanted his opinion on AI to be trusted then he should have made his money some other way.

[pfdietz]

Character assassination is not a replacement for a good argument. But hey, I'm sure you get a rush from that sense of righteousness.

[discreteevent]

The "good" argument is that people trust other people's opinion more who have not been paid to advertise. I trust the doctor who personally recommends a drug more than the doctor who was paid to recommend the drug - even if they recommended the drug before they were paid. That's a fact of life, it's not "character assassination". Tao didn't do anything wrong by making an ad but he can't expect people to take his opinion seriously after someone gave him a lot of money to state an opinion that favors them.

[keybored]

They stated a completely general principle of trust, not tied to any person or character trait. That’s not character assassination.

[lupire]

Do you have any evidence that he took their money?