Dozens of mathematicians sign Leiden Declaration urging skepticism about AI math claims

Dozens of mathematicians have signed the 'Leiden Declaration,' warning that artificial intelligence threatens fundamental values of their discipline, including proof, attribution, and transparency. The declaration urges governments to regulate the AI industry and invest in public alternatives, emphasizing that mathematical research must remain guided by human judgment and shared community values.

A new Leiden Declaration, endorsed by the International Mathematical Union and published on June 2, 2026, warns that AI could undermine mathematics by flooding the field with plausible but flawed proofs, weakening attribution, shifting incentives, and giving tech companies too much influence over research priorities. "Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work," said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in a statement. "The Leiden Declaration is a well-thought-through response to what is currently happening, as AI continues to disrupt this space." Ars Technica reports: The Leiden Declaration, which has already drawn hundreds of signatories, warns that recent AI developments are threatening "characteristic values" of mathematical research, "often in ways that disproportionately affect students and early-career mathematicians, and hence the long term future of the discipline." First, it points out how AI models can "produce plausible but unreliable (or even incorrect) arguments which are difficult to distinguish from correct mathematical proofs." Such developments put reviewers under increasing pressure and are "jeopardizing our ability to implement traditional standards for the correctness, transparency, and independent verifiability of proof," the declaration warns. "Inaccurate AI-generated drafts are cheap to produce, and there is a risk of cluttering the literature with claimed results that are simply wrong," said Leslie Ann Goldberg, head of computer science at the University of Oxford, in a statement. "Once that happens, the errors are likely to propagate as new results are built on faulty foundations." Second, the declaration highlights how "models trained on published works frequently return outputs that do not properly cite the human works they synthesize," while also pointing out that many current AI models were trained on data obtained through "exploiting licenses and access arrangements" or "simply violating copyright protections." Third, the declaration describes how the use of AI "may become incentivized for its own sake, disrupting our mechanisms for hiring, funding and recognition" while leaving out researchers who lack access or are "unwilling to use technologies controlled by organizations whose values they do not share." Fourth, the declaration warns against mathematics research "communicated through informal channels such as press releases or blog posts, often without any research paper or other disclosure of information necessary for scientific evaluation." Such communication strategies can lead to "oversimplification" in media reporting that overemphasizes AI tools' significance at the expense of prior human contributions, and "misleadingly uses specific mathematical tasks as metrics for the general reasoning capacities of commercial products." Fifth, the declaration describes "increasing involvement of technology companies in mathematical research" as threatening the "autonomy of mathematics," especially as university budgets are under pressure and researchers may feel greater professional incentive to collaborate with technology companies on "asymmetric terms." This also raises the risk that mathematics research questions amenable to AI-driven techniques may be prioritized. What can mathematicians do about this? The Leiden Declaration urges them to treat AI as a tool, not a substitute for human responsibility. Individual mathematicians should disclose AI use, remain accountable for the correctness of their work, continue crediting human authors, and use AI tools only when they align with the declaration's values. It also warns that mathematics can be applied to "warfare, oppression, mass surveillance, and the undermining of democracy," so mathematicians should weigh the ethics of tech-industry partnerships carefully. Professional organizations are encouraged to develop AI-use guidelines for publication and review, protect researchers from having their work used as training data without consent, support peer-reviewed publishing, and "actively prepare to become involved if major mathematical results are claimed using unconventional means." For policymakers, the recommendations are blunt: "protect the rights of authors," "regulate the artificial intelligence industry," and "invest in public computational infrastructure." The declaration also urges people to "don't believe the hype," warning that tech companies have "a strong commercial incentive... to overstate the capabilities of their products." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PARIS, France (AFP) — Dozens of mathematicians signed a declaration Tuesday calling for the discipline to resist beating the drum for artificial intelligence developers. The "Leiden Declaration", backed by over 150 professors from across the world including Europe, Japan and the United States (US), warned governments especially not to "believe the hype" about systems' maths abilities. Their intervention follows claims of increasing capability from AI firms, including performance in elite international competitions and alleged solutions to thorny open questions in the field. AI "opens new and exciting opportunities, but it also raises questions that cannot be left unexamined," International Mathematical Union (IMU) vice-president Ulrike Tillmann wrote in an endorsement. "The future of mathematical research must be guided by human judgment, fair and transparent practices, and the shared values of the global mathematical community," she added. AI developers face "a strong commercial incentive... to overstate the capabilities of their products," the declaration read. Released "on market timelines" rather than at the pace of human-reviewed science, AI publicity can "misleadingly use specific mathematical tasks as metrics for the general reasoning capacities of commercial models", it added. With hundreds of billions of dollars in investor cash up for grabs, companies are scrambling to paint AI models in a glowing light. "There is a competition to the death on the part of the main labs... they are trying, using mathematics... to attract investment so that each of them will be left standing," Columbia University professor Michael Harris, one of the declaration's co-authors, told AFP. In recent days, both SpaceX -- the Elon Musk-owned rocket firm which includes subsidiary xAI -- and Anthropic have advanced towards stock market listings, while industry standard-bearer OpenAI is believed to be close behind. Just last week, OpenAI published to social media a video in which UCLA professor Terence Tao, a past winner of the IMU's prestigious Fields Medal, vaunted its products' potential to support research. Tao is "a very generous person, he gives an enormous amount to mathematics, but it's not healthy... to keep turning to the same person as if that person is the voice through which mathematics speaks," Harris said. Beyond the risk of maths being enlisted for commercial gain, the declaration authors said AI systems could produce plausible-seeming but incorrect proofs that are hard for humans to verify, or undermine attribution and credit to researchers on whose work it builds. They fear increased use of AI in maths could incentivise bandwagon-chasing research that takes advantage of the new tools at the expense of other problems, short-circuit peer review systems and put researchers at the service of AI developers, rather than self-directed free inquiry as in universities. AI also has potential harms in the shape of "warfare, mass surveillance, political disruption and environmental damage," the authors wrote. They urged individual mathematicians to "evaluate the ethical consequences of your research, and if necessary withdraw from harmful work".

Dozens of mathematicians signed a declaration Tuesday calling for the discipline to resist beating the drum for artificial intelligence developers.