This has to be some kind of projection, right? Tao was getting LOTS of attention before the AI saga.
> Suddenly, with this AI math thing in the past year or two, he is starting to get more non-academic focused attention.
He's just gaining popularity in your bubble, which is probably not much larger than the audience he previously had. It's not like he's suddenly become orders of magnitude more famous.
What I would expect of someone who goes to an lecture of a professor. I never said he was completely unknown; just that he didn't have widespread recognition outside of academia. Getting autographs after an academic lecture doesn't dispute this.
>He's just gaining popularity in your bubble, which is probably not much larger than the audience he previously had.
The reason why he is gaining this popularity isn't anything to do with his academic achievements though. It's because of him being a child prodigy that is commenting on AI in math. So yes, he is reaching much further than his base, especially because of OpenAI's advancements in math and what it means about AI capability going forward. He has essentially positioned himself as the voice of mathematicians' position on AI and math.
You (NewsaHackO) made a claim, which the other commenter showed was wrong. Then your successive comments change the nature of the claim / qualify your statement to a point it is a different one.
This is just an observation, It is not my place to make a judgment. We all learn by nuancing our understanding, so the thread may have widened everyone's worldview. I learned something and thank you both for this tidbit.
But it is also important to be humble: we are all wrong about many things. Most of those things don't matter to us as a person or to our lives. Thus when there is a (presumably) low-importance opinion as the one discussed here, maybe it is a good moment to take a step back, reflect, and update our worldview.
It helps us grow when we update our beliefs, and it is a sign of a wise man that he can accept that he was wrong and learn from it, rather than to argue about semantics or reframe the debate.
Reducing him to child prodigy is, I don't know, condescending? You do realise he's one of the greatest living mathematicians, right? Child prodigy sounds as if his greatest life achievements was being smart kid or something, not his substantial contributions to mathematics as an adult. He was one of the most important voices in maths long before transformers were discovered.