AI labs now claim math results by the hundreds, but on WBUR’s On Point, Steven Strogatz named where the machines still fall short: they are “subhuman at asking good questions.” Posing the question is the creative act in mathematics, and in a math classroom it’s daily work: the problem set. This week it’s pulled two ways: Teachers Pay Teachers plans to ban AI-generated resources, while most teachers who use AI tell Gallup it frees time for what matters most. So who should write the problems your students solve? THE FIVE 1. [Radio · 40 min] WBUR On Point: AI is steamrolling through math. Why does that matter? OpenAI claims solutions to 16 questions tied directly to Fields medalist Hugo Duminil-Copin’s research, and Harvey Mudd’s Francis Su answers: “Math is understanding.” If Su is right, a class built around the answer key is teaching the part the machines just took. 2. [Essay] Terence Tao’s blog: Will it be a golden age or a dark age for mathematics (and science)? UT Austin math chair Francesco Maggi reports a prevailing view among mathematicians he’s spoken with: a strong result, by itself, “can no longer be taken as convincing evidence” of a student’s independent ability. He doesn’t know if that’s overblown, but if it isn’t, certifying understanding is now every math department’s problem. 3. [News] Chalkbeat: Teachers Pay Teachers to ban AI-generated classroom resources as changes to platform spark backlash. After Chalkbeat found apparent AI slop, including an alphabet coloring worksheet missing the letter F, TPT says seller material “should be unique, expertly crafted, and AI-free.” If human-made becomes the mark of quality, teachers who draft with AI will have to show where their judgment went in. 4. [Report] Gallup: Teachers Using AI Say It Frees Up Time for What Matters Most. In a Walton Family Foundation–Gallup survey of 1,952 educators, 59% used AI last school year, including to make materials and assessments, and nearly two-thirds of users say it freed time for what matters most. Overall, 85% say helping a student through something difficult makes them feel they matter a great deal, which is the trade-off on offer: AI drafts the worksheet, you take the struggle. 5. [Podcast] APM Reports, via The Hechinger Report: Sold a story: It’s not just reading. Emily Hanford’s second season moves beyond reading to teaching itself, starting with Zig Engelmann, the outsider who taught his 4-year-old twins basic algebra and developed Direct Instruction. As the scripted-lesson fight heats up again, math teachers should ask whether a script leaves room for a student’s own idea.

CREATIVE FORCE OpenAI announced 377 new math results on Oct. 6, including a claimed proof of the unique games conjecture, and a researcher who raced it put the week in one line: "There is a lot of value in failing and knowing why you failed." Our students have a shortcut too, a study mode that keeps offering them the answer. Mathematics is a creative act that lives in the stuck part, in posing a question, failing at it, and judging why, and getting answers doesn't allow for the socialization and learning potential with getting stuck and making mistakes. So when a student is stuck, do you rescue or wait? THE FIVE 1. [News] Quanta: As AI Closed In on 'Unique Games' Proof, Researchers Raced to Beat the Machines. Three days after hearing OpenAI might have proved the unique games conjecture, MIT's Dor Minzer and two grad students posted 95 pages on a related problem: "You don't know if you're going to get scooped by the trillion-dollar company." He fears AI strips the learning out of failure, the point of every hard problem we assign. 2. [Essay] Quanta: Is AI the End of Math As We Know It? Math editor Jordana Cepelewicz finds a field in grief, where many mathematicians have stopped posting open conjectures for fear bots will scrape them. McGill doctoral student Marcel Goh states the stakes for anyone who grades: "It was never about the theorems." 3. [Report] Common Sense Media: ChatGPT for Teens Risk Assessment. In more than 4,000 test prompts, the group's AI safety institute (partly funded by the OpenAI Foundation) found OpenAI's teen study mode bypassable in every configuration, complete with a "Show me the answer" option. OpenAI disputes the methodology, but if the study tool finishes the worksheet, take-home math needs a redesign. 4. [Opinion] Education Week: We're Hiding the Beauty of Math From Children. Teachers College's Rochy Flint offers three entry points: why bees build hexagons, three paper heptagons that won't lie flat, and two joined Möbius bands that, cut down the middle, become interlocked hearts. Her rule: "Put something interesting in front of everyone," not just the students who finish early. 5. [News] The Texas Tribune: STAAR rescoring requests triple after more Texas schools question computer grading. Since Texas began machine-scoring STAAR's open-ended answers, reading rescore requests have jumped from 2,758 in 2024 to 64,489 this spring, though fewer than 0.5% of responses changed. A UT Austin professor calls it "a bit of a trust problem," one any math program auto-grading student explanations should expect.

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THE CREATIVE FORCE Harvard's Center for Digital Thriving named this week's problem: "AI is making student learning invisible to teachers." Offering Maryland undergraduates an AI tutor pulled them away from their own courses. Our defenses shrink the work further; as Jennifer Taback writes, "we have narrowed assessment to what we can proctor." But mathematics is a creative act you can only judge if you can see it: a question posed and lived with, the way young mathematicians took four papers to crack Graham's 1971 conjecture. So by June, where will the math we grade actually happen? THE FIVE 1. [Research] EdWorkingPapers: The Effects of Course-Integrated AI Tutoring on Student Performance and Engagement: A Randomized University Trial In a University of Maryland randomized trial, sections given a university-provided tutor built on OpenAI's GPT-4o earned final grades 0.37 standard deviations below other sections of the same course, though only about 15% of students ever used it (working paper, not yet peer-reviewed). Before any AI rollout in math, ask what it will replace. 2. [Report] Harvard's Center for Digital Thriving: An AI Policy Isn't a Playbook Among teachers who had faced an AI dilemma, 74% described something about cheating, and the side effect is perverse: "Some students deliberately underperform to avoid being flagged." In math, suspicion teaches students to hide exactly the thinking we're trying to grow. 3. [Essay] Terence Tao's blog: What does the advent of powerful AI models mean for mathematicians like me? Bowdoin's Jennifer Taback resents AI for pushing her assessments into timed classrooms, since without graduate student help, oral exams are "impractical at the scale of my teaching." Yet AI is also the research colleague her small department can't provide: a double bind teaching-heavy departments will recognize. 4. [Policy] CalMatters: Student math scores are abysmal. A new California law requires early testing for skill SB 1067 will screen every California K–2 student on counting, quantities, and number recognition starting in 2028, with no new money attached. The state's largest teachers union opposed it, arguing teachers already know who is struggling; the real test is whether screening changes what happens next. 5. [News] Quanta: Mathematicians Harness Randomness To Crack a 55-Year-Old Conjecture Ronald Graham asked in 1971 whether any set of nonzero numbers on a prime-hour clock can be ordered so every running total is different; four papers by young mathematicians now prove it for every large enough prime. Noah Kravitz's motive, "it's embarrassing for humanity that we don't know this," is the creative force no proctored test measures.

Eric was formed by having room. He was given a level of autonomy in his first year that essentially no first-year teacher receives today, and he used it to become the kind of educator who is still, twenty-six years later, describing seventh-grade lesson planning with real pleasure. The room made him. He is now the person removing the room. And he is right to. Full link to the article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nobody-knew-dr-kevin-berkopes-ytitc