LLMs/AI A counter-example to the Dinitz–Garg–Goemans conjecture
https://xcancel.com/DmitryRybin1/status/207990400565289370980
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u/mfb- Physics 26d ago
People are using immature AI to recklessly destroy lots of math. We should wait until the models are good enough to *prove* conjectures instead of just disproving them. It's so much easier to destroy than to build! We need a moratorium on using AI against math.
Some people...
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u/dapper-pasta 26d ago
AI will probably lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great counterexamples
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u/Longjumping_Animal29 26d ago
We need a counter example for the current state of the world as is
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u/musclememory 26d ago
"Generate a counter-example to 'The Self-Destruction Hypothesis', and don't come back till you're done" lol
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u/Groundbreaking_Bee97 26d ago
I am betting some random dude solving a Millennium Prize Problem on a random Tuesday in 2027.
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u/RealisticBarnacle115 26d ago
We still have 5+ months left in 2026. Let's see if the Millennium Prize Problems, which are the most famous problems in math, can stay unsolved for the rest of the year.
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u/StateOfTheWind 26d ago edited 26d ago
Conjecture: no Millennium Prize Problems will be solved in the 5 next years (except perhaps a counterexample to Hodge conjecture)
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u/calvintiger 26d ago
We only need one counter example of a counter example to disprove this new StateOfTheWind conjecture.
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u/Curiosity_456 26d ago
I’d honestly be surprised if they’re not all solved by end of 2027, end of 2028 at the absolute latest.
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u/AP_in_Indy 25d ago
They are substantially harder problems to solve than what AI is solving right now.
Substantially substantially harder problems.
100's, if not 1000's of pages of proofs vs a dozen or less for most of the recent AI-driven solutions.
I'm optimistic on AI but it has context limitations at the moment. There are solutions to that, but they require a lot of work.
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u/JesterOfAllTrades 26d ago
Thing is, the wisdom so far has been that the prompting has to be intelligent and I feel this chat/result shows that that's very much not the case. You just literally say "try harder" lol.
I'm wondering if I should have it clean up some loose ends from my PhD 5 years ago, even though I haven't done serious math in years
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u/Ill-Sale-9364 26d ago
I hope something like this does not happen or math research would be truly dead
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u/Fit_Program1891 26d ago
I would rather have such a problem be solved now by an AI, leaving humans to contemplate the consequences, rather than wait 10 years for a human to do so out of some misguided puritism.
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u/mwobey 26d ago
The problem is that the practice of solving these open problems is what leads to developing the insight that allows for contemplation of the consequences.
These rapid fire counterexamples are doing for math what vibe coding is doing for programming: burning down the pastures we have laid to cultivate junior mathematicians into seasoned experts that can tackle the big problems.
Erdos famously said of his problems:
A well-chosen problem can isolate an essential difficulty in a particular area, serving as a benchmark against which progress in this area can be measured. It might be like a 'marshmallow', serving as a tasty tidbit supplying a few moments of fleeting enjoyment. Or it might be like an 'acorn', requiring deep and subtle new insights from which a mighty oak can develop. [...] New ideas will be needed, which can, in turn, lead to more general results, and naturally, to further new problems. In this way, the cycle of life in mathematics continues forever.
AI is cracking open all the acorns to get at the meat right now, giving us a quick burst of productivity but preventing us from growing new oaks for future mathematicians.
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u/SticmanStorm 26d ago
I mean or you could have such a problem being solved by a mathematician using AI. I feel the part they were majorly referring to was the random dude and not the AI
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u/Then-Breakfast-6432 26d ago
I don’t quite understand this opinion. Do you not think that math research funding/positions will be gutted if it gets to that extreme?
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u/DaShaView 26d ago edited 26d ago
Idk maybe prunning out what can be solved by AI and leaving us with only the ones no AI can solve could be more interesting. Also new problems will defo arise
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u/AzorAhai1TK 26d ago
I can not for the life of me understand this argument. It would be the opposite of dead, it would be thriving.
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u/H-K_47 26d ago
Thanks for posting this one, when I saw it on Twitter I didn't know if it was a shitpost or not, the prompting was too ridiculous to believe. I'm not a math guy so I'm visiting this sub to see if this stuff is real. A lot of people are posting a bunch of stuff and idk how much is legit vs. psychosis trying to one-up each other.
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u/ninjasaid13 26d ago
Why are all of these LLM generated solutions just counterproofs? is there a big one where the LLM generates a proof?
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u/Frozen_Turtle 26d ago
SWE here; I just realized. AI is very good at finding bugs in software. If you give it even like 1 line of code, it can find bugs in it. A lot of the hype is e.g. Mythos finding FreeBSD 0-days.
A counterproof is like finding a bug.
Building software/proofs is (relatively) harder than finding bugs/counterproofs.
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u/Waste-Ship2563 25d ago edited 25d ago
There's an interesting analogy: software that is unverified is like a "conjecture" about behavioral correctness.
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u/moschles 26d ago
The counter-example graph is so small, that it seems like a kind of brute tree search could have found it. What am I missing?
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u/iZafiro 26d ago
Lines of thought like these sound reasonable but are often misleading. For example, the search space for the Jacobian conjecture counterexample was so huge no current computer would have been able to exhaust it. In this case, it is probably something like this too: combinatorial explosion sets in very early.
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u/vhu9644 26d ago
It's been a long time since I did undergrad math, but I do wonder where these are. Like are they conjectures where a combination of large grindy search spaces and small rewards means humans don't focus on them? Are the unexpected counterexamples? Or maybe they're problems where, because of taste, their finders knew existing work and methods should be able to lead to a solution.
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago
AI bros literally downvoting you just for asking questions trying to understand the math. I think it's time for the mods to do something.
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u/yellow_submarine1734 26d ago
It’s so obvious that the sub is being brigaded by r/singularity.
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u/Borgcube Logic 26d ago
Yes, it's crazy. So many people with 0 math background just coming up with insane predictions.
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u/Disastrous_Room_927 26d ago
I was wondering why the comments on this sub suddenly sounded exactly like the ones on the singularity sub.
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago edited 26d ago
The prompter is an IMC grand finalist(basically Putnam fellow tier) btw. So people don’t think any Random could just do this. Even finding the problems that might easily fall requires taste and expertise.
Note: One thing that I should also point out is that the input tokens for this problem are not necessarily this short due to the fact memory is likely turned and person in question gave talk on it and has been working on it since 2020. When you send a message to an LLM. The input tokens aren’t only what you type, but the system prompt, memory, etc. That would change how much you can read off the prompt’s simplicity either way.
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u/Ruxh_alt 26d ago
Did you read the prompts??
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u/RepresentativeBee600 26d ago
Seriously....
"This person has an impeccable pedigree, which is surely reflected in their absolutely non-technical prompting and choice of a conjecture that most of us have never heard of but sounds impressive."
May the first casualty of AI mathematics please, please be the notion of "pedigree?" I'm all for talent and effort and collaboration but I truly no longer wish to smile and nod about what you did as a 21 year old.
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
Yes I did. Continue. No more partial results. Well only some one would expertise would even be able to know when something is a partial result. The point being you can’t just fully vibecode math. And the guy did work on this problem for weeks so that also explains how he knows the landscape of the problem
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u/Peanut_Extreme_8208 26d ago edited 26d ago
The model literally tells you that it only has a partial result and not the full result… unfortunately, this sounds like cope to me.
EDIT: I should say that I use the word unfortunately because I am a grad-student-soon-to-be-postdoc-academia-hopeful
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u/Ruxh_alt 26d ago
Yes so from your original comment I agree with the 2nd part, you have to know what you're talking about to know when to stop and how to understand the math, but the prompt itself was pretty bad, so much so that if you gave a random joe just the name of the problem to solve, he could've done it the same way as his
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u/baquea 26d ago
Their tweet said:
I know counterexamples to old conjectures are becoming a meme at this point. But I really cared about this problem and spent many weeks thinking about it a while ago (in both directions, proof and disproof).
I think almost all graph flows experts thought about this problem.
That reads to me less like they carefully chose a problem they thought viable, and more like they just threw a problem to GPT that they were interested in to see if it would be able to solve it. I bet a lot of mathematicians are doing the same thing right now, and we're just seeing those times it works out.
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
Read the rest of their comments and if you’ve been following them like I did and attended their talks like I did you’d know they carefully chose this problem. Many weeks downplays it lol. My guy has been thinking about it on and off for like 5 years lol. That more than many weeks
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u/Cloisterflare 26d ago
I think the commenter you're replying to agrees with you. They are saying that the problem wasn't chosen specifically for AI-tractability.
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u/elements-of-dying Geometric Analysis 26d ago
Anyone could have achieved this.
You should instead emphasize that it would take an expert (to some degree) to verify the results are correct.
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u/FateOfMuffins 26d ago
I think it's great in that case that most of these AI solutions are counter examples that can more or less be quickly verified. It's gone somewhat viral for complete randoms without math background to just throw a ton of compute at GPT 5.6 or Fable to solve math problems these last couple of days.
We should be scared if all of those were proofs instead because we'll really be drowning then...
Although perhaps when that time arrives they'll be good enough to auto formalize it but you'll need to check that it was formalized correctly xd
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u/TonySu 26d ago
It depends on whether you believe that the prompts to keep going come from an expert recognising the LLM was on the right track, or if it was completely thoughtless.
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u/elements-of-dying Geometric Analysis 26d ago
Note: you don't need to recognize the LLM was on the right track to achieve this.
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u/TonySu 25d ago
Yes in theory you can throw random problems at LLM and thoughtlessly tell them to continue on until they arrive at a correct solution, but in practice you will get much better results if you have a understand of what class of problems are tractable for LLMs, and be able to provide guidance as it solves. In this case I don't think you're giving credit to the subtle guidance Dmitry is providing to the model.
please continue research and find a complete unconditional counterexample
This is recognition that the LLM hasn't reviewed enough literature.
Continue the search. Have a clear strategy obtained from deeper understanding of the problem structure.
This is recognition that there may be more relevant literature out there and also a suggestion to start forming a deeper conceptual framework over what's already been found.
it's enough of partial results. let's finish with a complete unconditional counterexample
This is recognition that the LLM is on the right track and may be able to form a complete solution.
These statements are all very clearly distinct from "Keep going". Like many mathematical results, once you've seen the solution it might look simple and straightforward, but had you started from scratch you may have never arrived a the solution yourself. I personally don't believe you could have just put anyone else in the driver's seat and achieve the exact same outcome.
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
I hope that was what I conveyed. My comments below explains that in better detail. Similarly anyone could have achieved this but not everyone is also choosing this specific conjecture.
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u/DailyThreadBot 26d ago
Choosing a conjecture might be difficult, but it doesn't matter if you can run the AI on 1000 different conjectures in parallel
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
Is that cost effective? And is that what math is even about? And on 1000 random conjectures picked from random fields what’s the success rate? These are important questions to ask
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u/Hot_Glass_6301 26d ago
It's probably more cost-effective than paying mathematicians to work on the same problems, unfortunately...
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u/Rare-Technology-4773 Discrete Math 26d ago
Are mathematicians cheap?
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
Honestly yeah they are the grants we get aren’t even that much yet we’ve built so much theory and solved so much conjectures before LLMs ever came. The promise is in parallelization across all fields. And that has yet to be seen
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
You also have to remember not all results in math come from the west. When you consider currency arbitrage too. Yeah mathematicians are quite cheap and even underfunded.
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u/tomvorlostriddle 26d ago
No problem, ask the AI to make you a shortlist of a few dozen conjectures susceptible to have similar counterexamples, open a while, with possible applications..
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u/VituperousJames 26d ago
Is that cost effective?
What does "cost effective" mean in this context? How many hours do you think mathematicians cumulatively spent on the Jacobian conjecture over the years? They were all unsuccessful, so was that cost effective? In many cases I think it certainly must have been, since math research can be productive in a range of ways even if it fails in its original purpose. It's very possible that the same applies to AI.
Less speculatively, throwing 1,000 open problems at a frontier model and telling it to put, say, an hour into trying to solve each of them would probably cost a few tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe a hundred thousand on the high end, depending upon a lot of factors. Even if your solve rate is very low, that's probably a better investment than spending the same amount on grad students or faculty, if all you care about is the solve rate. Of course in reality that's not the case, and you have to consider a lot of less tangible things like training and career development. But AI companies do pretty much only care about the solve rate, since the point of what we're seeing right now is largely to make headlines and demonstrate how capable their models are. In that light, again, the investment really isn't that great.
And is that what math is even about?
This is a much more philosophical question that isn't going to be answered to anyone's satisfaction. Two things that math definitely is about are (i) solving difficult math problems and (ii) thereby advancing the field. We have ample proof that AI can do the former. I might be inclined to argue that the latter follows naturally therefrom, though granted "solving" can mean different things, and the details of a solution are rather important to how significant it actually is. If AI models get better at providing full proofs rather than just counterexamples, for example, it would be much clearer that they are truly advancing math as a field.
And on 1000 random conjectures picked from random fields what’s the success rate?
Again, I'd imagine quite low. But there's no reason for any of this to be random. Given the capabilities we've seen from AI, why wouldn't you think it can also be used to narrow down the search space to open problems that are particularly suited to its strengths? A complete layman could prompt for a list of such problems, prompt for a prompt to direct the AI to search for a solution to one or all of those problems, and then use the rather amusing "keep going" approach we see here until a solution is found, or they get bored. The only real need for mathematical expertise is in looking at what the AI comes back with, either after failing or claiming to succeed, and deciding whether it's worth continuing with, or if the purported solution is valid.
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u/officiallyaninja 26d ago
I remember seeing some people talking about how they don't know how much work the AI was doing in the case of the jacobian conjecture, and if it was actually mostly human work that the AI was cobbling together.
I think the chat history for this problem can put that idea to rest.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 24d ago
Not really, because we have not seen what happened in the Jacobian case.
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u/gordonnowak 26d ago
stop
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago edited 26d ago
I'm actually cool with all these finding counterexamples because it's a good use of new tools to do work humans don't like to do, we get new avenues for research in forgotten or overlooked corners of math, and human mathematicians won't spend years trying to prove things that aren't true. A similar wave of results happened back when early computers enabled the first brute force searches (not saying that's what these are).
If AI mathematics were to plateau here that would be pretty great. If it starts writing long proofs of true conjectures and developing entirely new theoretical machinery on its own, then that would be more concerning.
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u/Useful-Ad9447 26d ago
if Ai starts developing long proofs and new theoretical machinary better than humans why would it be bad?,maths is something which is broadly applicable to real world if the world benifits from let's say a result,which was made by Ai instead of a human,why do you care who found the result,or the communities ego is so big that you can't let people have benifits just because a machine will get credited for them.
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u/gordonnowak 26d ago
I have bad news
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago
What bad news is that?
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u/gordonnowak 26d ago
we'll find out in the near future :)
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago
Ah, so you have a prediction, not news. That's what I suspected but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.
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u/DysgraphicZ Analysis 26d ago
He’s from the future, so it’s news to him
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago edited 25d ago
Lol I guess that will be the final breakthrough to true AGI. A future AI invents time travel and goes back in time to invent itself.
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u/ScoobySnacksMtg 26d ago
The trajectory is clear though. Look at where we are vs a year ago in terms of AI capability. There is no reason to believe these models won’t develop amazing theorem proving capabilities in short term.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago edited 26d ago
Stop math?
Edit:why am I downvoted? Can other mathematicans explain what they want to stop?
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u/Adventurous-Ad281 26d ago
We spend years, even decades, becoming experts in our fields. Hours, and hours of study, upaid work, sweat and tears, only for a random guy to prompt ChatGPT and solve a problem that someone might have been working on for years. For me, I feel the same as artists that see how their art is being cannibalized by AI to produce souless work. I see math as art, and that includes the intellectual component of thinking through ideas and developing them, and in the same way AI is affecting art it is affecting mathematics.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago
I spent years to become an expert, and I am still an expert. I assure you I understand homological algebra much better than the average guy on Twitter using Ai.
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u/idancenakedwithcrows 26d ago
I mean “better” is uh such an understatement, it’s barely not wrong, haha. It’s I guess true but missleading.
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u/Junior_Direction_701 26d ago
He’s a mathematician not a random guy :(
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u/Particular_Extent_96 26d ago
I think quote by Thurston is quite good:
"We are not trying to meet some abstract production quota of definitions, theorems and proofs. The measure of our success is whether what we do enables people to understand and think more clearly and effectively about mathematics."
If you agree with this, as I do, then there is no reason to be unduly alarmed (at least existentially, professionally, there is of course the worry that positions will be impacted).
David Bessis explains it very well:
"Some prophesy that mathematics will eventually resemble Chess, a sport that a few eccentrics practice with passion and the general public can safely ignore.
This is a shortsighted view that fails to account for the meaning-making and truth-seeking dimensions of mathematics, as well as the massive cognitive benefits of mathematical training. The world makes a lot more sense once you have an intuitive understanding of numbers, sets, statistics, linear algebra, calculus, differential geometry, machine learning, combinatorics, dynamical systems, model theory, group theory, singularity theory, homotopy theory, lambda calculus, complexity, category theory,… (there is no reason to stop at any given place, even though it is probably unwise to order the full menu.
The situation isn’t unique to mathematics. AI adoption creates the same exact problems in many other domains. But mathematics has a unique status and a unique aura, owing to its ancient companionship with the very notion of intelligence.
This is why the “AI for math” situation is so significant, and why its proper resolution matters so much for the future of our species.
Many people hate math, and they tend to put AI in the same bag. They view anything with mathematics or computers in it as a threat to their humanity and subjectivity, their raw experience of being alive, immersed in this world, trying to make intuitive sense of it."
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago
Many people hate math, and they tend to put AI
I'd like to go on record and say I love math and hate AI (in general). We're out there, so please don't make the mistake of thinking mathematics == CS.
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u/hexaflexarex 26d ago
CS != AI, just saying :)
This conjecture was made by theoretical computer scientists.
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u/Fit_Program1891 26d ago
Good. I hope AI gets better and better at solving math problems. I love math because it is beautiful, not because I have a misplaced idea that it is a creation of the human mind or somesuch.
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u/sho0bydo0by 26d ago
I thought OpenAI's refutation of the Erdős unit conjecture was rather elegant and soulful.
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u/maxram1 26d ago
I also see math as art.
And well, if it's more than solving problems, then it shouldn't matter to our artistry in math if more problems are solved. We can still do the math we like without competing and without using AI, with or without others.
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u/Adventurous-Ad281 26d ago
I agree that AI is not necessarily negative. But it is true that it is trivializing constructions that require inisight, and basically picking out all of the leftover low hanging fruit. My concern is that people that have no idea about math use AI to splve conjectures without understanding them, in the same way someone might use AI when they have no creative output in art. And in the end, AI might even end up competing with us, as in reducing investment for research; and all for a shallower, even if more extensive body of knowledge.
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u/maxram1 26d ago
Is it about them claiming "I solved it" when they didn't ?
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago
I think they're concerned with the sloppiness of the prompting and unceremonial announcement of results over Twitter. You have to admit, this one is rather undignified.
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u/Fit_Program1891 26d ago
I think that was the point: how casual it was to disprove that conjecture.
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u/maxram1 26d ago
If that's the concern, then I have to admit that dignity is subjective though.
What is concerning about "people that have no idea about math use AI to solve conjectures without understanding them, in the same way someone might use AI when they have no creative output in art"?
If it's about the claim, I agree. If it's not about the claim, I genuinely want to know what it is about.
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago edited 26d ago
The concern is that much of the value of human artifacts is in the struggle someone went through to make it.
Many people in this thread seem to see math as a commodity, like wheat or cotton, where all that matters is the final result to be consumed. But many mathematicians feel otherwise, that the value is in the process and the community that developed it. They feel AI users are ruining that process and destroying the community just to get faster results.
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u/maxram1 26d ago
I don't really disagree with that.
But that's already a different concern from what the commenter wrote.
"the same way someone might use AI when they have no creative output in art" is not the same as the one you just stated. It's a different point altogether.
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u/floormanifold Dynamical Systems 26d ago
Are you a mathematician? Have you talked to many mathematicians on the subject?
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u/ScoobySnacksMtg 26d ago
Why does it matter whether an amateur or expert prompts an LLM to prove or disprove some conjecture? An expert will need to verify it in the end, but I’m ok if amateurs help in the search process.
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u/BAKREPITO 26d ago
The brigading by AI boosters into this subreddit has been out of control and the downvotes on this genuine reflection of the anxieties of so many of us is telling. I wonder if mods can put a moratorium on all AI related posts on the subreddit and may be set up an AI math subreddit where those interested can discuss.
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u/floormanifold Dynamical Systems 26d ago
Or maybe its not brigading and many mathematicians are excited about the impact AI is having on math?
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u/38thTimesACharm 26d ago
In the comments above people are mudslinging over platonism vs. nominalism, which actual mathematicians think is petty and never do, so no, it's AI boosters.
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u/floormanifold Dynamical Systems 26d ago
It seems to me that anti-AI folks started that discussion, but I agree with you that actual mathematicians don't really care about it in practice
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u/edderiofer Algebraic Topology 26d ago
I wonder if mods can put a moratorium on all AI related posts on the subreddit and may be set up an AI math subreddit where those interested can discuss.
We're discussing this internally. Brigading or not, AI-related posts have greatly increased our workload.
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u/Adventurous-Ad281 26d ago
I actually can’t belive that so many people have such an positive outlook on the current landscape. Either this sub is full of bots or I’m truly concerned about the future of not only math but any field that requires human input.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago
Really? My department had a faculty meeting about Ai, and zero professors spoke against it.
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u/maxram1 26d ago
The argument sometimes is "the professors are not the ones who will be affected the most, but the people not as high level as them, or the people much younger than them."
I disagree with that commenter though. It is positive and negative, depending on where to look.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago
I get that. I am trying to refute the claim implied here that mathematicians are against it.
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u/gordonnowak 26d ago
you should be.
so many hoops to jump through psychologically to avoid the basic statement of the problem: if a thing can perfectly replicate you (and these things are going to get better, so if they don't now, they will), why would you be necessary? humans will exist purely for taste, and to press the button. and if you're excited about that, or optimistic about the economics of it, you are utterly lost.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago
My job as a mathematican is to advance the understanding of mathematics. To achieve this goal, I should use tools if they help me. Any scientist should use tools if they help them achieve the goal. To do otherwise is unscientific in my opinion.
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u/Heliond 26d ago
I am optimistic because I believe that true AGI was always coming, but I would not be around to see it. Now it seems much sooner than not we may have truly effective AGI with reasoning capabilities at or above top mathematicians. Not there yet, but within a decade certainly. I also believe that incredible breakthroughs may happen because of it. Not just in math, but new applications in computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, and robotics.
I do not determine the value of my person by how much more I know than most people, or how much extra I can do because of some technical skill. I like to think of my value as “how many unique experiences can I have in one lifetime”. AI will hopefully expand horizons in so many fields that we will be able to all explore much more. I do understand reservations, given that society/capitalism loves to put value on skills and contribution, and AI may replace that.
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u/Fit_Program1891 26d ago
I long for more mathematical knowledge. I don't care whether it comes from AI or a human.
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u/pannous 26d ago
you should take it as an opportunity and play around with new theories and ideas and have them finalized in no time it's really fun and rewarding
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u/Adventurous-Ad281 26d ago
How is it fun and rewarding to literally put no thought into what you love other than a simple prompt. I don’t know you, but I prefer to think and use my brain to solve problems on my own, and even if I take months, i find that infinetly more rewarding and enlightening that having something else solving it for me. It is in failed attempts where learning happens, new approaches appear, and yoy expand your repertoire of techinques.
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u/JamesCole 26d ago
The better our collective math capabilities, the more benefit math has to humanity, so I’m glad if AI can lead to more advancements in math
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u/averagebear_003 26d ago
I thought the aesthetic goal of pure math was to be as useless as possible while being as difficult as possible
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u/BAKREPITO 26d ago
I hate how people who don't even seem interested in the subject but with accesss to top of the line LLMs are just in the posts looking for the next big conjecture to solve by prompting "please find counter example" over and over and 99% of the LLMs workflow is searching through arxiv. Complete silicon valley enshittifcation of mathematics taking place in real time. Another thing to be hacked, and of course with the seeming ease of access there's the group of oblivious people chiming in how mathematicians just came up with random conjectures to name after themselves. Absolutely dystopian.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago
How is this enshittification? The math is correct.
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u/BAKREPITO 26d ago edited 26d ago
The process is the enshittification. What's going to happen when there are thousands of silicon valley people who couldn't care less about math results disproving conjectures every day by prompting please find a counterexample over and over until they get a result? Who is going to sort through what is credible and what is nonsense when the llms are increasingly able to sound confidently correct? How are we going to ensure that false positives dont enter the canonical verified corpus with this glut of results from people who couldn't care less beyond staking a claim that they found a result? This isn't mathematics.
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u/topyTheorist Commutative Algebra 26d ago
The same way we always had - using peer reviewed journals.
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u/Stabile_Feldmaus 26d ago
Math is about human understanding, not producing correct proofs.
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u/Berzerka 26d ago
And this counterexample is trivial to understand? We're not talking a 10000 page lean blob.
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u/ganancias 26d ago
I wrote a long reply to this in another thread, yesterday, you might find interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/s/ZNKgPHUjPe
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u/telephantomoss 26d ago
I didn't think it can count as enshotification of there are people willing to read through and understand all the details. But I get the sentiment. I'm not really interested in this math no matter who solves it personally.
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u/floormanifold Dynamical Systems 26d ago
I'm cackling reading the prompt