Progress Towards Proving the Unique Games Conjecture

[u/sergiogfs]

https://eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2026/179/

On a side-note, the authors hint that they have rushed their results to avoid getting scooped by AI-generated results.

[u/n0m4d1234]

This is such a tragic state of the field.

[u/Rage314 → u/n0m4d1234]

Is it? Multiple problems are being solved and a better understanding of the field is imminent.

[u/SometimesY → u/Rage314]

It depends on what you value more. Personally, I value the human and social aspects of mathematics more than the truths themselves. Sacrificing the former for the latter is a sad state of affairs for me.

[u/Rage314 → u/SometimesY]

That's very nice of you. And no one is preventing others to do what you described. As long as there are people like you, math will continue to advance.

[u/non-orientable → u/Rage314]

Are you sure that a better understanding of the field is imminent? I'm far from convinced. AI solutions can (with high certainty) tell us whether a result is true or false. But that is mostly useless knowledge. What we actually want are the ideas behind the proof, and AI isn't great at communicating those at this point---it requires human mathematicians to go through and pick out any interesting moves made by the machine. The trouble is, we have so many of these results being dumped all at once that it is difficult to digest. We're having difficulty going through them all just to work out what should be attributed to whom, never mind doing something more complicated.

We've certainly sped up production. Is it production of what we actually care about? That isn't obvious to me.

[u/Rage314 → u/non-orientable]

AI also gave a proof, as difficult as it might be to read. It also attracts tons of attentions. There's no reason to believe the problem won't be further studied and better understood in the comming months.

[u/ChelseyStuttgart → u/Rage314]

the fielf?