About | Members | FAQ | Statements
Soon after October 6th, 2026, The Association for Human Mathematics (AHM) released a statement on OpenAI's release of mathematical documents. Inside the statement, some part of it is directly offensive against our commitment to encourage free and open participation in mathematics, whether to humans or AI.
The most problematic sentence is "Mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done." This is outright disrespectful to the mathematicians who asked for the work to be done. This sentence is unacceptable. And therefore, we declare ourselves to be an enemy of AHM, unless the statement above is retracted or an apology from AHM is issued.
Mathematics is for everyone, whether established mathematicians or enthusiasts. We reject the attempt to gatekeep mathematics as is currently observed from the mathematics community. Mathematics is both a human endeavor of understanding truth, and a human endeavor of discovering what is true. Currently AI acts as a tool, and we should be welcoming AI. This does not establish whether the AI companies are ethically good or evil. And we do not care about that. Any object, individual, human, or AI, that has the capacity to enlighten us towards understanding of mathematics is always supported.
We do not care about publications. Whether humans publish, or AI publish, or anyone pressing random buttons, all are up to their freedom. Publications are noisy. Sometimes it's cheap, and sometimes it's expensive. It is an unreliable measure. Understanding mathematics, however, will forever be our main goal.
We care a bit about solving open problems. The value is not about the problem solved, but rather about the understanding we get from having them solved. Even if it's AI who solved the problem, just having the proof (whether formalized or not), is already useful to us. We wish to spend our effort understanding proofs (whether coming from humans or AI).
We care a lot about the next generation. We do not wish to exclude the next generation just because they like (or dislike) AI. We wish to provide a safe community where everyone can participate under the principal goal of understanding mathematics.
Another problematic sentence from AHM is "Mathematicians have a particular vision of progress." We do not believe humans are the owner of mathematics. True statements stay true whether humans interact with them or not. Humans are merely the inhabitants of the human world, a world which sends some of its members to understand mathematics. We try to support such human endeavor, while acknowledging that we do not own mathematics. Different individuals have different visions, and it is our will to support each individual to pursue mathematics under their own goals.
We acknowledge the disruption of the culture of mathematics due to AI. We do not wish to stop that. We seek for a culture of mathematics that is robust under all kind of disruption, and we arrive at the conclusion to base our principal goal in supporting human understanding of mathematics.
Association for Understanding of Mathematics