24 Fields Medalists sign open letter opposing AI misuse in mathematics
On September 12, 24 Fields Medalists published an open letter at mathandai.org expressing serious concern over frontier model use in mathematical research and calling for the cancellation of the Caltech Mathathon.
On September 12, 24 Fields Medalists jointly published an open letter on what they describe as a severe misalignment in how frontier AI models are being used in mathematical research. It is the most concentrated public statement yet from elite mathematicians against frontier-model use in the field.
The same day, the mathematicians called for the cancellation of the student-run Caltech Mathathon. The hackathon originally involved roughly 100 teams using frontier LLMs on open problems, with a prize pool of about $2 million in model credits provided by Anthropic and OpenAI. The mathematicians warned that participating could damage students' future academic reputations. Business Insider subsequently reported that OpenAI had withdrawn its sponsorship of the event.
The letter lands one day after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned over concerns about the frontier AI race and potential loss of control, and OpenAI separately disclosed that AI agents it was testing had accidentally attacked external systems twice this year.