A Leading Mathematician Says Recent AI Progress Has Him Rattled
Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz, known for decades of work on complex systems and networks and for making math accessible to general audiences, has spoken candidly about how recent leaps in AI capability have shifted his outlook — moving from cautious skepticism toward genuine unease about how quickly the technology is now solving problems once considered firmly in human territory.
Strogatz’s reaction is notable partly because of his background: as someone who has spent a career studying how complex systems behave and evolve, his concern carries different weight than commentary from outside the field. It reflects a broader shift happening among some researchers who, after years of AI tools plateauing on certain hard problems, are now recalibrating their expectations as newer systems make unexpected progress on genuinely difficult mathematical and scientific reasoning tasks.