AI has driven the cost of idea generation down to nearly zero, similar to how the internet drove the cost of communication down to nearly zero, but this abundance of low-cost ideas does not automatically create scientific progress without corresponding verification, validation, and evaluation structures.

causalpending

Speaker

Terence Tao

Evidence Quote

I think AI has driven the cost of idea generation down to almost zero... Now the bottleneck is different. We're now in a situation where suddenly people can generate thousands of theories for a given scientific problem. Now we have to verify them, evaluate them.

Source

Terence Tao – How the world’s top mathematician uses AIDwarkesh Patel
Created: 8/12/2026, 6:05:48 PM

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