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sysguest • today at 4:57 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

well math has always been about "understanding things" -- hence proofs and etc is the main tool in the field

(and why math differentiates between conjectures (maybe true) and theorems)

so that "oh some 3rd party person/machine understood it for me" can feel... a bit icky


Replies

metanonsense • today at 6:02 AM

Even pre-AI, there have been proofs that took years to be verified, understood and some were disputed forever and still are (like the Mochizuki / IUT drama). So, even without AI, maths has reached a point of specialization, where only a few people in the world know the areas used in a proof well enough to check it. When „new math“ is invented for a proof, people may even be more disincentivied to put in the effort. So, I‘d argue, AI makes understanding new proofs easier, not more difficult.

rzz3 • today at 5:07 AM

And yet for someone like me who is not a math expert, it has (all) always felt unapproachably foreign.

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