Mathematics education
Subject in Education
Mathematics education has come up in 1 episode across 1 podcast in TMT, including Lex Fridman Podcast. 2 people have made recorded remarks about it.
What people said
Alex KontorovichNumber theorist at Rutgers University working on the Riemann hypothesis and the Lean proof assistant
Kontorovich argues, citing calculators and times tables, that students should master skills even when machines can perform them.
“just because a calculator can do it, you're going to be much better off if you can also do it yourself”
Lex Fridman Podcast: #503 – AI Crisis in Math: Navier-Stokes, Riemann Hypothesis & Complexity Theory (Oct 26, 2026) · Listen from 3:24:59
Kontorovich reports that undergraduate grades have become bimodal, split between students who use AI to learn and those who use it to get answers.
“What we're seeing at the undergraduate level is a bimodal distribution”
Lex Fridman Podcast: #503 – AI Crisis in Math: Navier-Stokes, Riemann Hypothesis & Complexity Theory (Oct 26, 2026) · Listen from 3:26:37
Ankur MoitraMIT mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, visiting the Institute for Advanced Study
Moitra advises young people to act as if they had already succeeded and pursue what they genuinely value.
“Pretend you already have tenure. What would you now do?”
Lex Fridman Podcast: #503 – AI Crisis in Math: Navier-Stokes, Riemann Hypothesis & Complexity Theory (Oct 26, 2026) · Listen from 3:35:02
Podcasts
- Lex Fridman Podcast · 1 episode
Episodes
#503 – AI Crisis in Math: Navier-Stokes, Riemann Hypothesis & Complexity TheoryLex Fridman Podcast · Oct 26, 2026 · 3 h 43 min
Lex Fridman and mathematicians Alex Kontorovich, Ankur Moitra and Steven Brunton discuss AI's claimed proofs of quasi-Riemann, Navier-Stokes, unique games and what it means for mathematics.