3 months ago
- Terence Tao's early interest in machine-assisted math teaching began in 1999 with Java applets for courses and visualizations.
- Modern AI helped migrate old web content and port Java applets to JavaScript, reviving them with graphical upgrades and few bugs.
- He used AI to create new applets, including a special relativity visualization (like 'Inkscape in Minkowski space') and a tool for the Gilbreath conjecture.
- The process was painless, and Tao plans to add interactive visualizations as supplements to future papers, accepting low downside risk from LLM-generated code.
- User feedback on applets included suggestions for improvements, and Tao discussed technical details, such as handling reference frames in the relativity app.
- To avoid obsolescence, Tao notes that LLMs can understand and port code effectively if it has logical structure and standard mathematical context.