33
Mathematicians are grappling with the possibility that AI might eclipse them
(www.understandingai.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
33 points (69.4% liked)
Technology
87469 readers
3436 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We don't need mathematicians to clear the proof as valid if it is checked by a formal proof system. Mathematicians would only need to check the theorem itself to make sure it describes what it should describe.
I think chess and go are a bad comparison. Their solving does not conclude in some societal use. They are interesting only as problems, but mathematics is interesting as a solution too.
Mathematics, and really any other subject, are not just about solving formalized problem. It is much more important to understand what question to ask.
One of my colleague once said the definitions in a good (computer science) paper should be the most interesting part, theorem statements should be the second interesting, and the proofs should be obvious.
Formal proof means nothing if it cannot give us insight in other proofs.
Same with open problems, Mathematician love open problems because given that no expert are able to solve them, their solution likely involves novel mathematical ideas. Fermat's last theorem on its own is no where near as interesting as the mathematics that leads to its soluion.
Given that AI have yet to be able to wield the mathematical corpus effectively in solving large projects (or even fully autonomously improve large software), it would need human guidence, and by that, human experts are needed to understand the problem.
To qoute another one of my colleagues, people orchestrated AI to solve an open problem are simply the apple falling on Newton's head. Apple "knows" about the existence of gravity, because its motion follows it, but it takes a Newton to formulate and explain gravity that leads to a number of technological advancement later. Without the question "why do apple fall", apple will keep falling, we will keep noticing it, but we would never turn that observation into useful technologies we enjoy today.