The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived
The Quanta Podcast
Quanta Magazine
4.7 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2026, shock at AI’s growing mathematical abilities turned into something more like wonder — and concern. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with writer Konstantin Kakaes about how AI is changing not only how mathematicians do math, but also why they do it. This topic was covered in a recent story for Quanta Magazine.
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Exactly 50 episodes ago on just our second Quanta podcast, I talked to our math editor, Jordana |
| 0:11.0 | Cappellowitz, about the potential of AI in mathematics. And specifically about how it might change |
| 0:17.9 | the art of mathematical thinking, the beauty of an elegant proof, |
| 0:23.7 | the taste in deciding what math is worth pursuing and what's not. It was a portrait of a field |
| 0:30.1 | thinking a lot about where it might be headed and questioning its own future. That story ran in |
| 0:36.3 | Quanta in April 2025, and by July, things already |
| 0:40.9 | seemed to have changed. A couple of AI models, Google OpenAI, a couple others, turned in |
| 0:47.5 | gold medal performances in the International Mathematics Olympiad, which is the most prestigious |
| 0:53.3 | competition for advanced high school |
| 0:55.3 | math students. It's not the same as high-level research mathematics, but AI is knocking on that door, |
| 1:02.8 | too. So it's enough to say that a lot has changed in a year. |
| 1:18.1 | Welcome to the Quanta podcast where we explore the Frontiers Fundamental Science and Math. |
| 1:20.8 | I'm Samir Patel, editor-in-chief of Quanta magazine. |
| 1:27.0 | We discussed the next step in the relationship between AI and math in a recent story. |
| 1:29.1 | It was called The AI Revolution in Math has arrived, and the author of that piece, contributing writer, former quantum math |
| 1:35.0 | editor, Constantine Cacayas, is here to discuss it with us. Welcome to the show, Constantine. |
| 1:40.4 | Thanks for having me. So, Constantine, what's the big idea? The idea that I was trying to get at in this |
| 1:47.8 | story is that math is at a real inflection point because of artificial intelligence, that for a number |
| 1:56.9 | of years now, there had been tension over whether AI could do anything at all. It was like |
| 2:02.5 | a dog that could talk. He didn't really care what it said. It was like, wow, it's a talking dog. |
| 2:07.8 | And over the course of the last year, AI, in the hands of capable mathematicians, has begun to do |
| 2:15.3 | things that are really interesting. And it's done so more quickly than most observers expected. |
... |
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