Canadian mathematician Jacob Tsimerman, this year's Fields Medal winner, announced at the award ceremony in Philadelphia on July 23 that he is joining OpenAI to work on AI safety. The 38-year-old University of Toronto professor will relocate to San Francisco, taking leave from his faculty post rather than resigning outright.
Tsimerman won mathematics' highest honor for reshaping o-minimality theory into a tool for arithmetic geometry and proving the long-standing André-Oort conjecture. Despite that achievement, he argues AI capabilities research has enough talent already, while AI safety remains dangerously understaffed. He previously co-authored a report with Andrew Critch categorizing AI-driven extinction risks by who would bear responsibility for them.
The move highlights a growing split among mathematicians over how seriously to treat AI risk. Machine learning professor Luca Ambrogioni compared the hire to "hiring Lionel Messi as project manager," while OpenAI figures including Greg Brockman and Sebastien Bubeck publicly welcomed Tsimerman, emphasizing the value mathematical rigor could bring to safety research.