On the very day he was honored as a newly-minted Fields Medalist, Jacob Tsimerman made headlines by announcing his decision to join OpenAI, with a focus on AI safety research. Prior to this, he had raised concerns about the potential for AI to lead to human extinction, even publishing a taxonomy paper on the subject. In his only post on X, he hinted at the looming threat of mathematician unemployment, while also revealing that he had already incorporated AI into his research to boost efficiency. Jacob Tsimerman's credentials are nothing short of remarkable: he aced the IMO, became the youngest full professor in the University of Toronto's history, and clinched the award for proving the André-Oort conjecture. His protégé, Levent Alpöge, recently debunked the 87-year-old Jacobi conjecture using Claude Fable 5 and is now working at Anthropic. Meanwhile, the other three recipients of this year's Fields Medal—Hong Wang, Yu Deng, and John Pardon—have also made their mark. Hong Wang's research dovetails with the needs of AI reasoning, whereas Yu Deng and John Pardon are less inclined to make a career shift.
