Lex Fridman Podcast - #472 – Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI

Terence Tao is widely considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history. He won the Fields Medal and the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, and has contributed to a wide range of fields from fluid dynamics with Navier-Stokes equations to mathematical physics & quantum mechanics, prime numbers & analytics number theory, harmonic analysis, compressed sensing, random matrix theory, combinatorics, and progress on many of the hardest problems in the history of mathematics.
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep472-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.

Transcript:
https://lexfridman.com/terence-tao-transcript

CONTACT LEX:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Terence’s Blog: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/
Terence’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TerenceTao27
Terence’s Books: https://amzn.to/43H9Aiq

SPONSORS:
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OUTLINE:
(00:00) – Introduction
(00:36) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections
(09:49) – First hard problem
(15:16) – Navier–Stokes singularity
(35:25) – Game of life
(42:00) – Infinity
(47:07) – Math vs Physics
(53:26) – Nature of reality
(1:16:08) – Theory of everything
(1:22:09) – General relativity
(1:25:37) – Solving difficult problems
(1:29:00) – AI-assisted theorem proving
(1:41:50) – Lean programming language
(1:51:50) – DeepMind’s AlphaProof
(1:56:45) – Human mathematicians vs AI
(2:06:37) – AI winning the Fields Medal
(2:13:47) – Grigori Perelman
(2:26:29) – Twin Prime Conjecture
(2:43:04) – Collatz conjecture
(2:49:50) – P = NP
(2:52:43) – Fields Medal
(3:00:18) – Andrew Wiles and Fermat’s Last Theorem
(3:04:15) – Productivity
(3:06:54) – Advice for young people
(3:15:17) – The greatest mathematician of all time

PODCAST LINKS:
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– Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips

Big Technology Podcast - Sam Altman’s Gentle Singularity, Zuck’s AI Power Play, Burning Of The Waymos

Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover: 1) Sam Altman's 'Gentle Singularity' essay 2) Is Altman overhyping the technology's current capabilities 3) Why the next few years may see crazy AI development 4) The case for and against humanoid robots 5) OpenAI's o3 pro model and the value of tool use 6) Meta's acquihire-zition of ScaleAI and founder Alexandr Wang 7) The case for the move and the rationale behind Zuck's aggressiveness 8) MetaAI posts 'private' conversations 9) Google traffic to web publishers falls off a cliff -- here's the data. 10) The burning of the Waymos 11) Alex fight robots

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Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 Bonus: Yaroslav & Sergiy, Railsware – Part 2

Yaroslav Lazor started writing code when he was 10 years old. It took him a while to understand that making a difference in the world wasn't just about writing code - but he has arrived there these days. He is the father of 4 daughters, 2 of which are artists and a couple who are digging into their entrepreneurial roots with running their own lemonade stand. He lives in Los Angeles, and has learned to be a better person through pushing himself as a founder.

Sergiy Korolov also started coding when he was young, though 4 years later than Yaroslav. He went to a technical university, and as his career in leadership grew, the number of lines of code he contributed to decreased. He is located in Poland, and loves to snowboard in the winter, and bike in the summer. He has 3 kids, and recently started teaching coding to his oldest son.

Yaroslav & Sergiy were building software for clients, the typical Ukrainian software route. Over time, they realized that building their own products was the best way to make an impact - so much so, that they decided to start building their own.

This is the creation story of Railsware.

Sponsors


Links



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Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations

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Big Technology Podcast - What Apple’s Failures Say About AI’s Limitations —  With M.G. Siegler

M.G. Siegler is the author of Spyglass. He joins Big Technology to discuss Apple’s subdued WWDC and whether it signals deeper trouble with AI's capabilities. Tune in to hear a breakdown of Apple’s “UI over AI” approach, whether the company can pull off the Apple Intelligence vision at all, and if Liquid Glass is a redesign destined to fail. We also cover the vibes at the conference and the state of Apple today. Hit play for clear-eyed, no-nonsense analysis of the tech world’s biggest stories.

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Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com


Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 Bonus: Yaroslav & Sergiy, Railsware – Part 1

Yaroslav Lazor started writing code when he was 10 years old. It took him a while to understand that making a difference in the world wasn't just about writing code - but he has arrived there these days. He is the father of 4 daughters, 2 of which are artists and a couple who are digging into their entrepreneurial roots with running their own lemonade stand. He lives in Los Angeles, and has learned to be a better person through pushing himself as a founder.

Sergiy Korolov also started coding when he was young, though 4 years later than Yaroslav. He went to a technical university, and as his career in leadership grew, the number of lines of code he contributed to decreased. He is located in Poland, and loves to snowboard in the winter, and bike in the summer. He has 3 kids, and recently started teaching coding to his oldest son.

Yaroslav & Sergiy were building software for clients, the typical Ukrainian software route. Over time, they realized that building their own products was the best way to make an impact - so much so, that they decided to start building their own.

This is the creation story of Railsware.

Sponsors


Links



Our Sponsors:
* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY


Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Talk Python To Me - #509: GPU Programming in Pure Python

If you're looking to leverage the insane power of modern GPUs for data science and ML, you might think you'll need to use some low-level programming language such as C++. But the folks over at NVIDIA have been hard at work building Python SDKs which provide nearly native level of performance when doing Pythonic GPU programming. Bryce Adelstein Lelbach is here to tell us about programming your GPU in pure Python.

Episode sponsors

Posit
Agntcy
Talk Python Courses

Bryce Adelstein Lelbach on Twitter: @blelbach

Episode Deep Dive write up: talkpython.fm/blog

NVIDIA CUDA Python API: github.com
Numba (JIT Compiler for Python): numba.pydata.org
Applied Data Science Podcast: adspthepodcast.com
NVIDIA Accelerated Computing Hub: github.com
NVIDIA CUDA Python Math API Documentation: docs.nvidia.com
CUDA Cooperative Groups (CCCL): nvidia.github.io
Numba CUDA User Guide: nvidia.github.io
CUDA Python Core API: nvidia.github.io
Numba (JIT Compiler for Python): numba.pydata.org
NVIDIA’s First Desktop AI PC ($3,000): arstechnica.com
Google Colab: colab.research.google.com
Compiler Explorer (“Godbolt”): godbolt.org
CuPy: github.com
RAPIDS User Guide: docs.rapids.ai
Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com
Episode #509 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/509
Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm

--- Stay in touch with us ---
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Security Unlocked - Ignore Ram Shankar Siva Kumar’s Previous Directions

In this episode of The BlueHat Podcast, host Nic Fillingham and Wendy Zenone share Ram Shankar Siva Kumar’s dynamic keynote from BlueHat India 2025, where he explores the evolving threat landscape of AI through the lens of the Microsoft AI Red Team. From adversarial machine learning to psychosocial harms and persuasive AI, Ram highlights real-world case studies, including prompt injection, content safety violations, and memory poisoning in AI agents. Ram underscores the urgent need for robust red teaming practices to secure AI systems against traditional security flaws and emerging threats across images, text, audio, and autonomous agents. 

 


In This Episode You Will Learn:  

 

  • Why old-school security flaws still break modern AI systems 
  • Real-world AI red teaming in action, from scams to memory hacks 
  • How small input tweaks can fool AI across images, audio, and text 

 

Some Questions We Ask: 

 

  • Can attackers fool AI using just slight image changes? 
  • Are generative AI systems vulnerable to prompt manipulation? 
  • Do you need to be an expert to break an AI model? 

   

Resources:      

View Ram Shankar Siva Kumar on LinkedIn    

View Wendy Zenone on LinkedIn   

View Nic Fillingham on LinkedIn  


Watch Ram’s BlueHat India 2025 Keynote: BlueHat India 2025 Day 2 Keynote - Ram Shankar Siva Kumar 

Listen to Ram’s Previous Appearance on The BlueHat Podcast: Not with a Bug but with a Sticker 

 


Related Microsoft Podcasts:   

  

  

  

Discover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at microsoft.com/podcasts   


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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S11 E3: Rob Duffy, Healthedge

Rob Duffy lives in New York with his family. He moved to the states to go work for a small online bookstore that we know today as Amazon. He's married with 2 kids, and enjoys to cook. But, his main passion is flying, as he has is pilots license and enjoys flying small planes. He recalls training on a simulator with a rendering of the Seattle space needle, which he got to fly next to in the real world once he got his license. He admits his wife has a love/hate relationship with his flying - IE she prefers when the flight is over.

Rob's has a track record of successfully building platforms - IE figuring out how to do things once instead of multiple times. His current company was growing through acquisitions, and Rob was brought on to unify these and create a converged platform for what the company had to offer.

This is Rob's creation story at HealthEdge.

Sponsors


Links


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* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY


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The Stack Overflow Podcast - Better vibes and vibe coding with Gemini 2.5

Gemini 2.5 is DeepMind’s most advanced model yet, with strong reasoning and coding capabilities. 

Connect with Tulsee on LinkedIn.

Connect with Logan on LinkedIn and Stack Overflow

Check out our previous episode with Logan, we discussed his unique path from coding to AI to product, the challenges of non-determinism in AI models, and surprising lessons from working at the Apple Store.

Congrats to Populous badge winner Pascal MARTIN for answering the question PHP echo vs PHP short echo tags.