In his recent interviews, he says he has very little time to do math these days outside of research meetings with his PhD students and postdocs.

Wasn't it Tao who suggested, fairly early on, that the best way for a researcher to contribute to mathematics may be to drop everything else he or she is working on and study AI instead?

Pretty sure it was Tao but I could be wrong. In any case it now seems more defensible than it did when the idea was first broached.