陶哲轩点出了 AI 对科研思维方式的根本改变——不是替代思考，而是让犹豫变便宜。做研究、写代码、搞创新的团队看完会重新理解 AI 的价值。
著名数学家陶哲轩指出，AI 正在消除认知摩擦，让研究人员不再因繁琐的验证工作而放弃大胆想法。过去，数学研究的大部分时间花在检查案例、追踪文献、将直觉转化为计算等琐碎环节，而非灵感迸发。AI 降低了这一循环的成本，使得数学家可以尝试更疯狂的方向，因为许多非常规想法并非被证明为错误，而是被不便所扼杀。陶哲轩认为，降低认知摩擦不会取代品味、判断或证明，而是让更多微弱信号在放弃前变得值得审视，这正是发现的起点。
Terence Tao: "We lived in a world with cognitive f…
Terence Tao: "We lived in a world with cognitive friction until very recently, where every task required us to use our brain.
So we didn't really think about it, we just thought this was the cost of doing something intellectual. But now we have AI and the other technologies that can bring these frictions down to zero."
Most research time is not spent having cinematic insights.
It is spent checking cases, chasing references, translating intuition into computation, testing a path, finding it false, and deciding whether the failure taught you anything.
AI changes the cost of that loop.
Terence Tao says that now he can try “crazier things,” and that makes so much difference. Because unconventional ideas are often not rejected by proof, but by inconvenience.
A mathematician may avoid a strange direction not because it is foolish, but because the bookkeeping, coding, or literature search needed to test it is too expensive for a hunch.
This is where cognitive friction becomes scientific friction.
Lowering it does not make taste, judgment, or proof disappear; it makes more weak signals cheap enough to inspect before they are abandoned.
AI is making hesitation less expensive, and that is often where discovery begins.