Beijing creates mathematicians’ alliance for AI research — South China Morning Post
In Beijing, leading Chinese mathematicians have created the Yau Mathematical Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Alliance. The initiative is led by Fields Medal laureate Shing-Tung Yau, director of the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center at Tsinghua University. The network is expected to involve more than 1,000 researchers, the South China Morning Post reports.
Tasks of the new association
The alliance will unite eight leading institutions. Its members will work on specialized artificial intelligence models for mathematics, the use of AI to generate mathematical hypotheses and formalize proofs, as well as systems whose reasoning logic will be easier to interpret.
According to Yau, a year ago he did not consider artificial intelligence’s capabilities to be so significant. At the same time, over the past six to 12 months, he has seen AI work on tasks that were difficult for mathematicians to solve. The scientist compared the development of AI in mathematics to a tsunami and urged Chinese mathematicians to work with this technology in an organized manner.
Assessment of the gap with the United States
Yau said that China lags behind the United States in using artificial intelligence for advanced scientific research, particularly in mathematics and physics. In his view, Chinese models perform tasks for ordinary users well, but are significantly inferior to leading American systems in scientific work.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
He also noted that American AI companies have recruited thousands of scientists and attracted significant industrial investment to solve complex scientific problems. According to him, such efforts remain fragmented in China.
Debate over AI’s mathematical results
The launch of the alliance came amid debates over AI’s ability to solve complex mathematical problems. Last week, OpenAI released 722 mathematical manuscripts, grouped into 372 sets of results, claiming progress on hundreds of open problems. The following day, the company withdrew three manuscripts after discovering an error that invalidated one argument and affected two related papers, and also revised another 14 papers.
Some mathematicians criticized the pace and scale of the publication, stressing the need for careful verification of results, comprehensible explanations, and proper recognition of previous research. Fields Medal laureate Terence Tao called for slowing down the use of AI because of concerns about its negative impact. Yau said that this dispute should not hinder cooperation between mathematicians and artificial intelligence developers.
