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HarHarVeryFunnytoday at 2:34 PM1 replyview on HN

I get the impression that the value of unproven conjectures is more in the new math and techniques that may be discovered - by humans - trying to prove/disprove them, rather than much utility in any eventual result.

Take something like Fermat's last theorem - I'd be curious to hear of any use of the result itself, but there was a massive amount of new mathematics generated by those working on it, whether ultimately successful or not.

These AI math proofs are interesting testament to the power of reinforcement learning applied to math, obviously reflecting the axiomatic self-consistent nature of math itself, but it doesn't seem they have the same value as a humans working on these problems since they are using known math to solve them rather than inventing anything new.

However, it would still be interesting to analyze the LLM lines of reasoning that lead to any of these results, since there may be value there even if no new math, just as human Go players have found value in analyzing computer Go.

Still, as Demis Hassabis has himself said, the real goal with AI is discovery and creativity - you want to create the thing that could design the game of Go in the first place, not just play it. Similarly with math, while there is interest in seeing an AI "play math" using the rules of the game, what would be of much more interest is the AI that can create new math, in the same way as Andrew Wiles did while proving Fermat's last theorem.


Replies

lacunarytoday at 4:08 PM

> are using known math to solve them rather than inventing anything new.

Isn't a new proof new math? If not, what qualifies as new math?

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