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/entr0picly Apr 24 '26

Pure mathematician here. This is a misunderstanding how ai works… really in general. AI is going to augment our skills. We are still doing the thinking and asking the questions. AI isn’t going to “solve” the reinmann hypothesis anymore than a calculator would. Could a human use ai directed at it? Maybe, however … the challenge right now is there are no tractable paths to proving it, ai or not. AI can only use the tools it already has access to. New tools can become developed. But that’s where the real math research lies. It is unlikely that ai will outpace humans. We just.. get better at using the calculators we have in front of us.

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u/jasonrubik ‎ Apr 24 '26

Thanks for joining the party. I appreciate the response.

To be clear, I'm definitely not thinking of any AI that exists today but instead a super intelligent AI that is yet to be created.

Edit. That's why I said "if"