alt Hacker NewsThe Maxwell Conjecture Is False (GPT 5.6 Sol)
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Tip for smart science-y young people: think about a career in experimental physics. Experimental data is the complement of theoretical power. Since theory can be provided cheaply by LLMs, experimental ability is now the bottleneck for progress in physics.
I expect to see frontier labs or startups hiring experimentalists to provide data for LLMs to analyze, pushing towards breakthroughs in areas like room-temperature superconductors and fusion.
It is mathematical folklore that one should attempt to prove a conjecture by day, disprove it by night. Jordan Ellenberg recently popularized this in his 2014 book. He and I both heard this from Barry Mazur, but it dates at least to Bing, if not antiquity.
What is the purpose of mathematics? To be the architect of new conventions by seeing clearly past the old? If so, believing that the entire point is proving statements is a poor start. Bill Thurston was a visionary who happened to prove a great deal of what he saw, but his influence was his vision.
For those of us who like to understand every line of code we generate, and have labored for years to learn how to make best use of AI, a factor of two is a reasonable estimate for our productivity gain.
For those of us who believe mathematics is about achieving human understanding, having machines decide what's true and what isn't makes a night and day difference. Again, about a factor of two.
This one is interesting as it's been hand verified. There was a recent proof that inadvertantly "proved" the collatz conjecture by triggering a bug in LEAN: https://infosec.exchange/@0xabad1dea/117002106099986943
On the one-hand side, it's really impressive how LLMs drive mathematics forward, and this pace is only accelerating very quickly.
At the same time, most of the proofs I've looked at appear super messy and chaotic to me (while still being correct of course, so it doesn't matter). LLMs do not care about "elegance" the way human beings do, which is a big advantage. LLMs for mathematics is such a great fit on many levels. Can't wait for a significant breakthrough, prove P=NP and all hell breaks loose.
Visualization of the configuration: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/9db65255-16ff-4f8e-8be1-1...
Please, what does that mean for Maxwell equations? For electromagnetism?
(Wikipedia redirects Maxwell's conjecture to Maxwell equations).
I can't wait to see AI disprove the DN conjecture soon.
Awesome! Confirms what we know; LLMs are superhuman at short term reasoning and breadth
Maxwell's Silver Bullet?
Does anyone have any idea why there's no Wikipedia article (or redirect) for Maxwell Conjecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_Conjecture
Most common names have redirects and Wikipedia is very complete. Was it just not commonly known by that name?
This is so inelegant I can't tell if it's accurate or not. ...On the other hand, I can't solve it myself.
"The idea behind this construction was suggested by an LLM (OpenAI’s GPT- 5.6 Sol). The authors have verified the mathematical details and have written the argument in their own words. Computer algebra software (Mathematica, Maple) was used to verify computations and produce visualisations"
Having the title "The Maxwell Conjecture Is False (GPT 5.6 Sol)" instead of "The Maxwell Conjecture Is False" is editorializing
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Ok, who gets the credit?
Does this work like a bug bounty program, where OpenAI pays you if you find a nice application for ChatGPT?
Seems like that anyone can now prove math conjecture. Maybe someone already prove some math problem and is not even aware of it.
Lies, obviously. AI is worthless.
EDIT: Guys! Sarcasm!
Not to denigrate the moment (AI ingress into theory which this is a part of) or the result here, but these headlines are perhaps overstating the importance - some of the theories and conjectures are available for AI-assisted exploration because they are quite niche and not very important.
Maxwell's name being invoked here for instance implies a hundred year old foundational problem like Fermat, but it's just a recent conjecture that was inspired by reflections from the great man on his work.