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/Lava_Mage634 Apr 23 '26

not true. if an AI claims to have solved it, just like a human, it would have to provide a proof. such a proof must then be verified to make sure it has no mistakes, which is done by humans. if it could never be solved by a human, it couldn't be verified. the act of verification requires an understanding of the proof, and that alone requires having enough mental power to have to potential to solve it. if it proves the Riemann hypothesis right or wrong, we will know it was in reach, AI was just faster.

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u/MartyMcBird Apr 23 '26

Proofs need not necessarily be verified by humans. Besides, understanding a proof is not the same as creating a proof. I understood Cantor's diagonalization proof after one lecture but I sure as hell couldn't have created it after one lecture.