I don't understand why this is news? This could have been said by any one particular contributor from HackerNews but just because it's from Terence Tao it hits the front page? I understand that the guy is a great mathematician, but why is his input on this any more valuable than the myriad of discussions about o1 from other professionals on here?
Most people would likely not engage with that commentary simply because they don't enjoy the same celebrity status as Tao. Yet, I think those voices are equally important to be heard. Terence isn't the only PhD/professional using or discussing these tools.
Of course not. And he is relatively more popular than some others on his level of expertise. But I think Tao's opinion is a bit more interesting than a general PhD/professional.
Someone at the top of their field discussing the capability of models in their field is much more interesting than someone mediocre in their field making trite observations about capabilities outside their field.
There is any number of people discussing o1 from the context of their field. So again, why are we valuing one set of discussions above another? Terence Tao may be great, but he's not the end all, be all of commentary. There's plenty of other PhDs talking about this very same thing.
the best competitive programmer in the world (gennady korotkevich, aka tourist) recently crossed the 4000 ELO barrier in Codeforces. o1 is about 1807 ELO.
the best ai model is compared against the best human in the context of competition programming, to set a clear standard of comparison.
similarly, terence tao represents the highest levels of math in analysis.
his input is valuable in regards to math. his summary of the current capabilities of o1 is important because we can then understand the level of competence the best ai models have right now, and set a standard of comparison just like with coding.
site note:
any number of phds = not the same expertise.
there are thousands of phds who graduate every year, let alone thousands of unemployable phds who fail to get a professorship.
there are only 2-4 fields medalists chosen every 4 years.
Tao is famous for being the world's most singular and inspiring genius. It's kind of a meme position* that most people accept because they think everyone else accepts it, but for people of a certain inclination, it makes anything he might say into a Pronouncement to read depths into. If you think someone is possibly the greatest mathematician of all time, you'd be interested in everything they think!
(* I think one could very legitimately view him as the top researcher in harmonic analysis in the world - he is a great mathematician - but it's not clear to me how people go from that to Epochal Genius and his extreme celebrity status across STEM)
