Terence Tao discovered AI’s lack of “mathematical intuition”

Mathematical genius of our time Terence Tao discovered a fundamental gap between human thinking and artificial intelligence! He points to a critical deficiency of modern systems. The absence of what Tao himself calls “mathematical intuition”.

What’s really happening? When artificial intelligence generates mathematical proofs, at first glance they look perfect. But a professional mathematician sees something striking. Errors are so unnoticeable, and when you discover them, they seem openly absurd. Such blunders, according to Tao, “no one person would ever make”.

The problem is rooted in machines’ lack of that very “metaphorical mathematical intuition”. An inner compass that whispers when something doesn’t add up. Tao notes a critical weakness – modern models literally “get stuck” after choosing the wrong direction. And “have difficulty understanding when they’ve turned the wrong way”.

Hybrid systems like AlphaZero emerge as an alternative, using Monte Carlo tree search as a “symbolic structure”. Although even this system remains fundamentally neural network-based, the combined approach shows interesting results.

And perhaps the combination of large language models and symbolic thinking can finally overcome the limitations. And develop real mathematical intuition in artificial intelligence.