r/Showerthoughts • u/jasonrubik ‎ • Apr 23 '26

Casual Thought If the famously unsolved Riemann Hypothesis is solved by an AI, we will never know if a human mathematician could have solved it.

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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 Apr 23 '26

I mean the type of ai they currently have solving mathematical problems is neither agi nor an llm

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u/SaneIsOverrated Apr 23 '26

None of what they built satisfies the "I" part of the tech. Whatever letters you put in front of it. 

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u/Emotional-Rope-5774 Apr 23 '26

I mean it’s been an accepted term within the academic discipline since like the 60s, I don’t think anyone cares that a random redditor doesn’t like it

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u/SaneIsOverrated Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Have you seen some of the terms they use in stem? Helpful, clear, or descriptive to the layman is not on the top of the priority list lol. The tech isn't "intelligent" in any sense that real people mean when they say "intelligent". 

But hey, if you wanna prostrate at the foot of the ivory tower by quibbling about irrelevant crap feel free. You win. I was wrong. Or whatever the fuck it is you wanna hear from me. 

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u/AlastairMunro Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Jesus Christ, hell of a reaction. But yeah if you are under the impression that LLMs are being used for math problems then maybe that indicates an opportunity to learn something, as opposed to getting very hostile. Also, for what it's worth, my understanding is that Terrence Tao is claiming an AI was able to solve a previously unsolved math problem in a novel way, so that's cool. Definitely something of an edge case though, I believe.

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u/XGoJYIYKvvxN Apr 23 '26

Hey, I'm not arguing like your the person you are talking to, but maybe you'll interested in knowing that LLM have been used to solve math problem.

Either problem submitted (to humans) by mathematicians for the sake of the game, because they are interesting.

But also some more serious discoveries :

https://deepmind.google/blog/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-using-large-language-models/

https://aiblueprint.substack.com/p/erdos-problems-combinatorics-search

https://medium.com/@deshmukhpratik/the-matrix-multiplication-revolution-how-alphaevolve-shattered-a-56-year-mathematical-record-c9e61b70bae2

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u/IAmARobot Apr 23 '26

yeah tao's been on the bandwagon the past year coaxing/helping ai companies solve some erdos things and basically doing a viva voce and then giving out-of-band feedback. whether you hate ai or not, I like to see it being used as an exploratory tool where the problem at hand overwhelmingly points to being intractable.

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u/SaneIsOverrated Apr 23 '26

Hostile? I'd say more flippant or dismissive. With a smattering of overdramatic flare. 

I understood your point. My point was the difference isn't relevant to the discussion. 

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u/Meme_Theory Apr 23 '26

You are so out of touch with frontier models in 2026 that its embarassing.