🚨 Top mathematicians just issued a clear warning about AI: Don't believe the hype. Over 2,300 mathematicians, including Fields Medal winners Terence Tao and Peter Scholze, have signed the Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics. Endorsed by the International Mathematical Union, it is the most significant collective response from a major academic discipline evaluating frontier AI impact. The core message is straightforward: current AI tools have real constraints when applied to complex work, and commercial incentives are pushing claims beyond what the technology can reliably deliver. Read the full declaration here: leidendeclaration.ai Why this matters beyond mathematics The declaration identifies five threats that apply to any field deploying AI: 1) Plausible but unreliable outputs. AI produces arguments that "look" correct but contain subtle errors. In high-stakes work, human verification is critical and costly. 2) Attribution collapse. Models trained on published work don't properly cite sources. Training data was often obtained by exploiting licenses or violating copyright protections. 3) Distorted incentives. AI use becomes incentivized for its own sake, warping hiring, funding and recognition. 4) Press release science. Results announced "on market timelines" before community evaluation can take place. Commercial incentives drive firms to "overstate the capabilities of their products." 5) Loss of autonomy. Research priorities shift toward what is automatable rather than what is significant. The leap: chatbots → agentic AI → software → research We have moved from chatbots to agentic systems. Now AI is solving 80-year-old mathematical conjectures. The declaration is not about toy problems. It is about frontier systems being deployed in contexts where correctness matters. What this means for your industry The same risks apply wherever AI is used in high-stakes work: law, medicine, finance, engineering. The declaration's core insight is simple: AI generates narrative, not truth. Verification cannot be automated away. Human accountability is non-negotiable. 💼 I’ve written a more detailed breakdown of how these risks show up in practice and what organisations are doing about them. It’s available for subscribers. ☕️ What have you observed in your industry? Have verification or hidden costs issues already appeared in your AI deployments?