AI Does Mathy Stuff and Mathematicians Are Annoyed
June 11, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Believe it or not: I had a friend. His name was James Terwilliger, Ph.D. He studied mathy stuff. He worked at Halliburton Nuclear with me until a tragic car accident claimed his life. Nevertheless, I remember fondly his standing up in the company cafeteria and saying, “This is Stephen E Arnold. He has a degree in medieval poetry.” The nuclear engineers in the cafeteria roared and hooted. Then, Terdwilliger (my name for him) announced: “Stephen will now recite a poem.” I stood thanked Dr. Terdwilliger and recited William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.” It was one sentence and drew a number of nuclear engineering and math wizard responses. Terdwilliger’s took the prize for remarks. He said, “I never read a poem. That’s why.” Halliburton Nuclear employed at that time about 600 nuclear engineers, nuclear physicists, mathematicians, and one person who had a degree in poetry.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
When I read “Over 150 Mathematicians Warn Governments Not to “Believe the Hype” About AI,” I thought about Terdwilliger. His mindset, as I recall, was different from mine. We had similar interests and our view of humor was congruent. The article could have been assembled by talking to Terdwilliger’s AI simulacrum or other real mathematicians.
I noted this passage:
"There is currently a strong commercial incentive on the part of the technology industry to overstate the capabilities of their products." Terdwilliger would have said, marketers cause more problems than they solve.
The write up adds:
In perhaps the strongest public rebuke yet, a new declaration signed by over 150 mathematics experts from around the world warned governments not to “believe the hype” when it comes to AI’s capabilities to solve complex mathematical problems, throwing cold water on claims of a revolution in the field. In a statement accompanying the 11-page “Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics,” International Mathematical Union vice president Ulrike Tillmann argued that AI “raises questions that cannot be left unexamined.” “The future of mathematical research must be guided by human judgment, fair and transparent practices, and the shared values of the global mathematical community,” Tillmann said.
Terdwilliger and other professional mathematicians I have known like Dr. Zbigniew Michaelewicz among others love problems. The whole point is figuring out how to solve, prove, disprove, or mix and match how their brains work to come up with a solution, a proof, or a negative example. Letting a machine solve a problem is probably not what would inspire confidence in the outputs. The mathy pros like to scribble on whiteboards. Dr. Julian Steyn would often mumble something and Terdwilliger would say, “It’s obvious that…” This is the human part of mathy types. A probabilistic collection of algorithms is only of interest when an equation is a problem. The outputs are definitely not going to get hugs and kisses from the whiteboard types.
Here’s another statement presented in the Futurism article warranting a look:
“Current automated techniques can produce plausible but unreliable (or even incorrect) arguments which are difficult to distinguish from correct mathematical proofs,” said signee and University of Oxford head of computer science Leslie Ann Goldberg in a statement. “This is a serious problem: research in mathematics (and in mathematical disciplines like theoretical Computer Science) almost always builds on previous research, so it is essential for researchers to know that the results in the literature are correct.”
The “statement” is a document signed by a set of mathy types. It is worth reading.
The conclusion to the Futurism article is, and I quote:
In short, it’s a ringing denunciation of the persistent hype surrounding AI, and a call for reining in its use that reverberates far beyond the world of mathematics. The broader scientific community has been reeling from a flood of papers that make heavy use of AI, risking contaminating the peer-review process with hallucinations. It’s also a pertinent reminder that AI models are being trained on cutting-edge research, often without sign-off from the original authors. “Mathematicians who never intended to contribute to AI development are having their work used for this purpose without their consent,” Leiden University anthropologist of AI Rodrigo Ochigame, who helped draft the declaration, told Scientific American. “I think that’s a deeply concerning situation.”
Terdwilliger had a great sense of humor. He liked whiteboards. However, he preferred old fashioned chalk and some weird, thick, crumbly chalk. He said, “I can’t do anything without chalk or a dry erase marker.”
Net net: I think the mathy types have output a truth the BAIT (big AI tech) tribe have yet to recognize.
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2026
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