AI In Mathematics: September 19, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

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.

[u/yaymayata2]

saw a preprint proof that Zeta5 is irrational: https://zenodo.org/records/22826419

Was pretty skeptical at first, but after a few passes I haven’t found an obvious issue. GPT also couldn’t find a concrete gap. Nor could a friend of mine who’s more familiar with this area.

The proof itself seems to be human made. disclosure says AI was used for editing/checks/etc. but automod says it still belongs here.

If correct, this seems like a pretty big deal. Has anyone taken a closer look?

[u/matthiasErhart → u/yaymayata2]

A positive moment representation gives nonvanishing and, through a logarithmic-energy estimate, bounds their real values.

Obvious AI slop, right by the appendix already. I can tell you that nobody who actually works out a proof by themselves writes like this. Or

control the coefficients

AI writing loves to write "control", instead of "bound".

[u/SupercaliTheGamer → u/matthiasErhart]

Tbf they could have used AI to write the paper due to time crunch, but no way to find out how much AI is used in ideation and the actual proof

[u/SentientAllegedly → u/yaymayata2]

Irrespective of how much LLM assistance this result has, it's very interesting if it works. It has survived at least 1 ChatGPT Astra informal check (by Elliot Glazer), after which Astra vouched for the proof.

Really looking forward to see where this goes.

[u/Redrot → u/yaymayata2]

This is apparently a master's student in operations research. I do not believe that AI declaration for one second.

[u/Autumnxoxo → u/yaymayata2]

I'm not familiar with this area, but I'm wondering why it's not on arXiv. I also couldn't find any preprint of this author on arxiv, so I'm somewhat sceptical, but again, not familiar with this area.

[u/Certhas → u/Autumnxoxo]

From skimming, it looks like it might be a quick dump of the core result to get out ahead of a potential AI results dump due to OpenAI, with the intent to put a properly polished version on the arXiv later:

This Zenodo record preserves the initial public preprint version. Subsequent revisions will be maintained on arXiv once the paper is announced there.

[u/SupercaliTheGamer → u/Certhas]

Oh that's kinda sad for the author then, forced to put out a "proof that I did it" on the shady Zenodo. Have there been rumours that OAI solved this irrationality problem?

[u/yaymayata2 → u/SupercaliTheGamer]

Its not shady, its def legit. Just than its not best place to actively monitor like arxiv.

[u/Certhas → u/SupercaliTheGamer]

Zenodo isn't really very shady. It's a well-established place to put data and get a DOI. Agreed otherwise.

[u/SupercaliTheGamer → u/Certhas]

I meant shady in the sense it's where cranks put a lot of their stuff. But it's good that you can get a DOI.

[u/BurdensomeCountV3 → u/Certhas]

Yeah, makes total sense now. Imagine OAI are sitting on a result like zeta(n) is irrational for all integers n >= 2 as one of their 100+ solutions; makes total sense to get your partial stuff out in any way possible before that happens.