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itsalwaysgood • today at 3:53 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Desire and motivation are factors to consider. Would you want to invest 5 years of effort into solving the Hypothesis 'the old way', knowing someone is probably working on it right now with AI?

And then once it's solved by AI: do you want to churn through the proof to understand it? What if it takes you 5 years to churn through the proof, and it turns out someone made a mistake with AI (I have no idea what would be realistic amounts of time, but the idea is still worth considering).

The issue is very complex, and you will always be hungry.


Replies

omnicognate • today at 4:05 PM

For sure, I just wanted to correct the impression that it has been solved. There are a lot of people going around pretending LLMs have solved everything and human maths is over, but what has been achieved with them so far, while impressive, is a very, very long way short of that.

If I were a mathematician working on the Riemann Hypothesis, I'd probably be rather pissed off right now but continuing my work, i.e. the same as I am as a software developer.

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