what im suprised about though is why arnt you and others here more suspectful of Tao's skeptisim of AI .. as Wittgenstein's ruler reminds us teh very thing we use to measure something else may itself need measuring .. so why should tao's expertise be any exception?
The dude keeps a continually automatically produced document of his takes on AI. He's not a skeptic overall. https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/ai-views.html . In this interview the interviewer describes him as an evangelist for AI in math and he doesn't disagree. https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/ai-views-interview.html
It seems like your inclination is to discount his experience with research mathematics. I agree with you that that's probably what Taleb would do - Taleb has a giant ego and basically operates under the assumption that everyone else has the same giant ego as he does but is (a) less honest about it (b) dumber than he is.
I also read and re read the link you shared .. it’s almost baffling that he is so incredibly hesitant on not being able to clearly take a position on anything and is so painfully nuanced in his writing as if he’s almost hedging every sentence ..
PS: All my life, mathematicians were made to look and portrayed like the ultimate truth seekers (both at school, by the media, in films and in the sciences etc) and all I see is in Tao is a man trying to so badly hold on to the main character energy … perhaps demonstrating a bit of humility like Lee Sedol after loosing to the machine would be in order … in his own words, he sees himself as a fox, not a hedgehog.. guess now that he's been outfoxed .. its best not to say unhinged stuff like "there's no reason to be this fast" or that absolulty out of touch "Math 2.0" cancer slide ... what. an. absolute. tool.
Questions of AI policy are all hard and anyone who confidently says they know the right thing to do is too confident. Tao's fallible like anyone else, but yeah, as voices to pay attention to go he's very good.