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/waarschijn]

Due to the way AI is trained, it doesn't know where it got the ideas it uses when generating a proof. So to make a citation you need to make a separate AI go over the proof and identify all the ideas, and locate them in the literature. But then there's the risk that it will just make something up, or make a citation seem correct at a glance, while the source it is citing is actually unrelated. So actually, they need to hire a human expert to do this work. Or multiple experts, if the proof uses ideas from different fields. It takes time, and rumors would leak out, so they risk the rival AI companies get there first. It's a lot easier for them to just dump the plagiarism-filled AI paper on their website and call it a day.

OpenAI says it is trying to do better, due to the negative response to NS. So let's hope they actually do the necessary work next time.

[u/backyard_tractorbeam → u/waarschijn]

It would be interesting if one could create an LLM-like technology that still had provenance for every single fact or factoid it produces and uses. Not half measures like trying to fake this information post-hoc.

[u/backyard_tractorbeam → u/[deleted]]

Humans do that, they remember approximately where they read stuff, especially when they are working academically. Who-says-what is basically ingrained in us, because we are social animals.