I think I saw it linked along with this article about the warped portrayal of genius Hollywood feeds us (especially in the Imitation Game): https://www.huffpost.com/entry/turing-the-myth-of-the-heroic...
So Tao's celebrity status as a genius does have that positive aspect. I think he disproves many stereotypes of genius and helps people believe that it's possible to brilliant, decent, humble, social and likable. I think that's useful.
He talked about this eloquently in his own blog where he argues against the "cult of genius" and says one needn't be a genius to be a mathematician: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-t...
So, by lionizing him as a genius I think media actually undermines its own narrative about what genius is. In that sense, maybe the cult of genius is bad but if we have to put a genius on a pedestal, it's great to have it be one who seems so normal.
With respect to his work, I always think of what Richard Feynman said in the start of this book "What do you care what other people think?" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393355640) He tells a story about an artist who holds up a flower and says "I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull." Feynman thinks he's nutty. He can see the beauty of the flower and the beauty of the science.
People who don't understand Tao's work probably think it's dull. I can't understand Tao's mathematical work. I'm studying math and I really hope someday I could. But math and science have gone so far now that work at the cutting edge really is incomprehensible to people outside the field. So, I'm inspired by the person who does the work. It's just the surface but it's what I have access to.
Feynman talks about this at the end of the chapter that starts with the flower. His father helped him love science and taught him how to think. Then he sent him to university to learn all the things he hadn't. But when Feynman came home, he couldn't explain quantum mechanics simply. So his father never learned what he didn't know. I hope he still loved his son for understanding it.
If you hit the link, you'll see the page appears to be a wall of text, not a simple slide or two. As you read deeper into the report, you'll understand that's an intentional aspect of the report. (I'll also note this is the Columbia explosion, not the better known Challenger disaster O-ring post-mortem discussed by Richard Feynman in his autobiography[1], even though that's a great post mortem as well).
[0]https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
[1]https://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/03933...