Mathematician Terence Tao, a 2006 Fields Medal winner and professor at UCLA, discusses with Big Think solving problems with AI and the process of finding solutions without. By using AI to effectively skip over the mistakes, challenges, and learning towards a solution, our creative thinking skills could diminish. On the other hand, real progress can be made.
Tao uses the tools for “secondary tasks like doing literature searches or checking a proof or writing some code, proof reading something that I wrote to see if there’s any opportunity to make things a little bit tighter.” This seems to be a common workflow among experts in their respective fields.
I keep thinking back to my graduate school days when I didn’t know what I was doing a lot of the time. The struggle was the most valuable part of the experience. I don’t know if I get as much out it if today’s tools were available then.
Tags: Big Think, math, paradox, Terence Tao