Mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. One of the leading voices on the use of AI in mathematics, describing AI models as working through problems in a "stream of consciousness" based on what they think they should see next, rather than devising a plan of attack as humans do—"improv dialogue rather than scripted text". Helped develop AlphaEvolve, a Google DeepMind tool designed to generate proofs for optimisation problems. Tao considers the field of AI in mathematics to be "moving very rapidly". He says another Google tool, DeepThink AI, is able to adequately explain its reasoning, though AlphaEvolve's can occasionally be hard to follow.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.