I don't think it is self-serving. Tao has stated plainly that he thought LLMs would go the route of assistants, like co-pilots. But what he feels now is that they are actually being engineered to be replacements. His claim is that the way OpenAI dropped these math results isn't "assisting" anyone, so we should all read between the lines.

Consider any man at his job, fighting the good fight. Your boss says "I've hired this man to assist you" and you are happy to finally have some help with your difficult task. Then one morning you come into work and see that the coming day’s work was done overnight by this other fellow. And the realization sinks in, he isn't there to help you, he is there to replace you.

In this view his reaction seems totally expected. I expect many professionals, e.g. doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. will make this realization sooner or later. The companies are saying these tools will assist professionals, but in reality they are aiming to replace them.

> The companies are saying these tools will assist professionals, but in reality they are aiming to replace them.

If anyone doubts this, consider that Anthropic considers its TAM to exceed $30 trillion which is nearly the entire GDP of the US and 25% of the world GDP.

Only makes sense if they believe they will massively replace labor. Which, to their credit, they used to admit openly and publicly and only stopped because some crisis PR people told them "hey maybe you shouldn't say the quiet part out loud while the hoi polloi still have the power to stop this from happening".

"doctors, lawyers, accountants, "

Regulated fields - another clueless poster lol.

I know many of you really hate whats happening but don't try and project it on other professions where the environment is different.

Society largely never cared about maths.

> But what he feels now is that they are actually being engineered to be replacements

lol. lmao even.

I guess there is a first time for everything.