But as far as we know, the proof it wrote is original. Tao himself noted that it’s very different from the other proof (which was only found now).
That’s so far removed from a “search engine” that the term is essentially nonsense in this context.
AI is currently great at interpolation, and in some fields (like biology) there seems to be low-hanging fruit for this kind of connect-the-dots exercise. A human would still be considered smart for connecting these dots IMO.
AI clearly struggles with extrapolation, at least if the new datum is fully outside the training set.
And we will have AGI (if not ASI) if/when AI systems can reliably form new paradigms. It’s a high bar.
But, I don't know. I tend to view these (reasoning) LLMs as alien minds and my intuition of what is perhaps happening under the hood is not good.
I just know that people have been using these LLMs as search engines (including Stephen Wolfram), browsing through what these LLMs perhaps know and have connected together.