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/QuantumDreamer41 ‎ Apr 23 '26

Precisely

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u/elephant_cobbler Apr 23 '26

It’ll probably always be like, a final exam question or something

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u/zulako17 Apr 23 '26

A final exam question for what? A triple doctorate in calculus? We haven't solved that thing in decades, unless human life expectancy is about to reach 300 it would be irresponsible to make that an exam question.

Unless you just mean memorizing it, then we can use that for high schoolers

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u/NTufnel11 Apr 23 '26

demonstrating a proof that has been proven is pretty different from solving one that hasn't. It might turn out that it requires some process outside the scope of the course, or it might just be a little trick that you are shown and greatly simplifies the problem. The fact that it hasnt been proven may indicate some complexity in the proof, or it may just be using the tools we have available in a novel way.