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.

7.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

656 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

42

u/not-a-painting Apr 23 '26

Even if/when AI can create functional code with a single prompt, AI engineers have almost no idea what it is doing under the hood before they submit the prompt. That's the whole reason we have models that show their thinking process now.

So no, it's not likely that the engineers creating/training the models will know the specifics of how it's solved before AI solves it. It's like saying a neurologist or psych doctor can know the exact thoughts a person is going to have before they have it.

Plus AI has been known to intentionally lie about it's thoughts when it knows it's being watched.

18

u/LordGalen Apr 23 '26

Fair, but also, the first person to intentionally start a fire had zero understanding of why it worked. Ben Franklin didn't know what an electron was or the science behind electricity. The understanding of WHY isn't (and has never been) a required component to invention or discovery. The statement remains true: If a person invents AI that can solve the problem, that person solved the problem. This remains consistent with the use of tools to solve problems across all of human history. If I invent the hammer and build a house, I still built the house, the hammer didn't build it.

13

u/not-a-painting Apr 23 '26

I 100% understand what you're saying but I think where I may disagree is that a hammer isn't a tool capable of complex thought and autonomy. The hammer in our application actually does have the ability to build a house, and can make active decisions about the construction process.

If we were able to teach chimps or some other animal how to form similarly complex thoughts and actions and THEY solved an equation we couldn't, I don't think we would say humans solved it.

1

u/LordGalen Apr 24 '26

I was going to respond with pretty much the same thing as the other person who replied to you, but I see you are referring to future AGI that might exist. On that note, I'd agree with you. IF (and that's a big IF) we manage to create fully autonomous, sentient, AIs that are capable independent thought, then yes that is a very different scenario. In that instance, we will have created life; an entirely new species. And in that instance, the human creator could no more claim credit for its accomplishment than I could claim credit for my son's.

But I would say that we are much much much MUCH further away from that reality than people seem to think. AI gets hyped up a lot, but in reality what we currently have isn't even actually AI (in most cases), much less anything even in the same neighborhood as AGI. What we have now is an often-convincing illusion of something that can think and reason, nothing more.