MANIFOLD
Terence Tao leaves academia for an AI Math startup (Ken Ono style) in 2026
40
Ṁ1kṀ10k
Dec 31
6%
Leaves Academia for AI Math startup
68%
Stays in Academia (UCLA or otherwise)
26%
N/A

N/A: Leaves academia outright (retirement), hybrid part-time academic and industry, leaves academia for some other non-(AI math) related industry (pedagogy, etc.)

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underpriced

bought Ṁ30 YES

Michael Freedman (the Fields medallist, the 4-manifolds legend) joins Yann LeCun.

Just commenting to say I like the ternary market structure for n/a, and appreciate when people use it over resolving n/a in the usual way. Thank you!

@EvanDaniel ooo i see

bought Ṁ250 YES

@strutheo The downside at the moment is that it's hard to bet on "leaves for startup, given no n/a", but that's a UI/UX problem that could be fixed on the front end. API support for that could be improved, but is adequate. So right now the two approaches fill different niches with respect to what they make easy to do, but I think the ternary market approach is underutilized :)

This paper suggests that the annual attrition rate for a man 30 years past his PhD (which is how old Tao is; he got his degree way back in 1996!) is about 4%

@duck_master Nice find!

Still holding onto my black swan... 🤣 the paper is from 2023, it doesn't account for the-- well, you know, the tail of the Gaussian that is the current academic climate (unfortunately).

bought Ṁ500 YES

Ken Ono is not normal. Terry has spent substantial effort on community building and infrastructure in academia; it would require a huge change in priorities. Note he's been able to sell out his brilliance for a long time before this.

@ArtimisFowl Broadly agree; though with the Black Swan caveat amidst the obvious academic-bureaucratic elephants in the room... who knows? Seeing as to his Lean-advocacy, and the obvious attention auto-formalization is getting in the AI-Math space, who knows?

It has, after all, been somewhat of a 202X zeitgeist for intellectual freedom to move into private yet retaining the academic spirit of publishing open-source whitepapers for all (Biotech, QuantFinance, ML, ... , etc).

All that to say, I do hope you are right

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