LLMs Are Currently Not Helpful at All for Math Research: Hamkins

> The frustration, for Hamkins, goes beyond mere incorrectness—it’s the nature of the interaction itself that proves problematic.

I would assume pairing LLMs with a formal proof system would help a lot. At the very least, the system can know what is incorrect, without lengthy debates, which frustrate him most.

This won't help the system discover or solve new math, but it make the experience far more endurable.

Well folks, Tao says he finds AI useful so I guess we can flag this and other stories that say anything to the contrary, pack it up and go home.

Terry Tao has found them helpful in the past[0], and I’d trust him over Hamkins.

[0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/the-story-of-erdos...

> “I’ve played around with it and I’ve tried experimenting, but I haven’t found it helpful at all. Basically zero. It’s not helpful to me. And I’ve used various systems and so on, the paid models and so on.”

Eh... I don't know. It's hard for me to believe such absolutist takes. Especially since other proeminent mathematicians (i.e. Tao) have spoken highly of the help and value they get from these systems.

I also see this kind of takes in my field. Especially from "senior" people, 20+ years of experience. The problem is that, when pressed, their "trying it out" is often the most basic, naive, technically atrocious type of testing. "I tried coding with it but it's useless" -> they tried once, 3 years ago, in a chatgpt web interface, and never touched it since.

I think there's a lot of disconnect between the overhypers and deniers. Both are wrong, IMO, and unfortunately both are extremely vocal while also being stubborn and unwilling to try different things. But my gut feeling is that if in 2025/26 someone says "basically zero" they are wrong. Or naive. Or make strawman arguments. And ignorable.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Well, this definitely won't make the front page despite upvotes. Too many people here are heavily invested and cannot stand for it.

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