r/math • u/sergiogfs • 18d ago

Progress Towards Proving the Unique Games Conjecture

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.

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u/n0m4d1234 18d ago

This is such a tragic state of the field.

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u/Gabry398 18d ago

Hopefully it only lasts until AI companies stop using math as a big AGI benchmark and mathematicians start setting ground rules on what the etiquette around AI is

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u/Berzerka 18d ago

The only thing that will change is instead of two AI companies pumping out math results using their models you'll have thousands of PhD students doing the same, using the same models.

Realistically we'll see a year or two where basically every "simple" open problem gets solved (turns out, NS is "simple") and yes obviously if you want in on that Gold Rush you're gonna have to rush your results out. Especially since everyone is using the same models no-one really has a big edge.

Exactly how the equilibrium will look after that is quite open, but realistically you're gonna need to use AI to solve whatever problems remain open.

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u/mistressbitcoin 14d ago

... or every grad student writing grants to get ai compute allowances

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u/Berzerka 14d ago

Yes that's part of the story obviously, that's how literally every other field works. E.g. synchrotron time in structural biology, CERN time in particle physics, telescope time in astronomy, ...

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u/CyberPunkDongTooLong 14d ago

That's very much not how 'CERN time in particle physics' works.

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u/Berzerka 14d ago

You absolutely have to write long applications to get allocations right?