A misalignment of AI in mathematics

Post by noosphr » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

causalmodels wrote: post #269

omnicognate wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement is not about AI but about the behaviour of AI companies. OpenAI have put vast resource into solving open maths problems: many millions of dollars of compute just on the Navier-Stokes result, plus whatever they spent on the broader Millenium Prize problems initiative and the other results they have published. Anthropic are doing the same. The statement is asking them to stop doing this. AI companies are…

What do we do about the problems that don't require many millions of dollars in resources? Last weekend I spun up a small agent swarm and pointed it at a field of math I have some affinity towards. Within four hours I had settled three conjectures, one of which is rather famous (for the field, not in general). It cost me about four hundred dollars. I am at a loss about what to do with these results. On one hand I fee…

Post by MurkyManzarek » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:08 AM UTC

tmhn2 wrote: post #200

As a mathematician maybe I am a little more optimistic than this declaration. I am thinking of Mochizuki's abc conjecture: He worked in relative isolation, and dumped a huge incomprehensible proof on the community (to oversimplify a bit). That's not totally unlike what might happen if AI generates a huge, incomprehensible proof of let's say RH. Well, what is the result? In the Mochizuki case, it was a lot of skeptici…

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:16 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #935

myng111 wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really resonates with me. I'm early in my PhD and I'm researching a niche form of data compression and IC design. I don't use any AI at all in my research, I do it the super old fashioned way, I read papers cover to cover and sections of textbooks to familiarise myself with the field. I genuinely enjoy doing this, it's really fun to think critically about what an author wrote or how a particular approach works.…

I’m no big AI cheerleader, but why don’t you try these models to see what they offer - they might suggest some things you haven’t thought of, or save you some time in your research. Are you sure they’d one-shot your algorithm? Maybe they’d come up with worse, maybe better, but you are in a perfect position to actually judge the validity of any claims a LLM makes in this realm, which most people are not. As to why bot…

Post by robotpepi » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:26 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #880

robotpepi wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't be sure AI will be able to ask the questions of the future. At least right now, AI is not capable of that.

Why do you need AI to ask the questions? You give your AI the problem, like 'make this computer program faster and more reliable', and it'll go off and do the math necessary to make it so.

Post by eru » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:28 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #743

saghm wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, was the point of math ever just because some humans enjoyed doing it? Even though a lot of it is theoretical, there's been all sorts of useful things that have come out of it as well due to an improved understanding of the universe through new ways of thinking about it. If it got to the point where no human could understand it and there were no ways to actually use it, I don't think anyone would bother having…

> was the point of math ever just because some humans enjoyed doing it? Yes. Friends and I often work on Putnam problems and this series: The (Almost) Impossible Integrals, Sums, and Series by Cornel Ioan Vălean