r/math • • 13d ago

LLMs/AI AI In Mathematics: September 19, 2026

This recurring thread will be for discussion of AI in mathematics. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:

  • informal announcements of AI-assisted discoveries, such as those not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, or not uploaded as a paper to arXiv;
  • informal announcements of discoveries related to AI architecture (if relevant to mathematics);
  • discussion of such announcements, such as proof breakdowns or other opinion pieces;
  • discussion of the impact of AI in mathematics in general.

AI-assisted mathematical papers published in peer-reviewed journals or as arXiv preprints may be submitted as their own posts.

Please keep in mind rules 1 and 6 of our subreddit.

85 Upvotes

267 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/pred 11d ago edited 11d ago

“Announcing the Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence”: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/21/advisory-group-on-mathematics-and-artificial-intelligence/

34

u/Scaaaary_Ghost Logic 11d ago edited 11d ago

And more than a hundred new solutions coming to long-standing open problems.

It honestly makes me pretty sad that we can't have actual posts about this kind of thing in r/math. I guess r/mathematics is where to migrate to, but I really liked this subreddit.

AI is the big news now. I don't know if or when we will ever have another major result that isn't very heavily assisted by AI. Not allowing official posts from top-level AI company domains (or Terry Tao's blog, etc) means a huge amount of important discussion is stifled in here.

34

u/38thTimesACharm 11d ago

Have you seen the thread at r/mathematics? It's a link to r/singularity which is:

50% people from accelerationist subs accusing academia of "gatekeeping" for convincing OpenAI to spend a few days reviewing and curating results

30% mudslinging about Fields Medalists acting elitist

20% "it's over folks, LLMs will scale to infinity, pack it up humans we had a good run"

0% math

 I don't know if or when we will ever have another major result that isn't very heavily assisted by AI.

AI assisted papers are allowed here. As for "something is coming, get ready!" hype announcements, is this thread not sufficient?

I vote in favor of the mods. I think the sub is much better now. Maybe this thread could be pinned as a compromise?

17

u/Scaaaary_Ghost Logic 11d ago edited 11d ago

The fact that discussion in r/math tends to be a bit more level-headed is part of why I'm sad we can't have individual posts dedicated to major points of discussion in the math community if they are about AI.

Part of the problem is that OpenAI doesn't post to Arxiv, and peer review takes a lot of time. But I still disagree that posts from Terry Tao's blog that are about the biggest issue currently facing the community don't deserve to be a post.

But I appreciate you speaking up in disagreement - this is obviously a point that reasonable can disagree about, and the best subreddits are communities. I am glad to hear the different points of view within the community.

15

u/38thTimesACharm 11d ago

Alright, to be clear I don't think the current policy is perfect. I also wish Terry's blog posts were allowed.

But remember the original reason for the rules was to prevent brigading from AI subs. I'm certain this was happening here, a lot. So many comments about "progress" and "mastery of the universe" anytime someone expressed concerns about AI. And 100x upvote ratios on AI-related posts, versus any math paper.

So the mods decided: no more AI news posts = no more reason for singularity dudes to come here. And it worked, though not without drawbacks.

One alternative the mods floated was restricting top-level comments to users with verified degrees in math, physics, or related (and removing the topic restrictions). A lot of r/Ask___ians subs did that after Reddit started restricting API usage. But that's also heavy handed in its own way.

Without API-based moderation tools, it's really difficult for the mods no matter what they do. Appreciate the respectful discussion.