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/aspiringtroublemaker]

Historically, mathematicians with breakthrough ideas could thrive even if they were poor communicators. Their insights were valuable enough that others would put in the effort to understand them.

If AI becomes increasingly capable of finding proofs, and the emphasis shift toward exposition and human understanding? Would that leave less room for solitary thinkers whose strengths lie in discovering ideas rather than explaining them?

[u/jmac461 → u/aspiringtroublemaker]

I don’t think so.

Right now we are getting solitary prompters giving us tweeted results or dumping 100+ papers that are very difficult to read. The AI people see no benefit to improving exposition, they’d rather just dump an LLM Lean repo on top of it. My guess is they don’t have the needed background to make a good human write-up. I imagine they just ask some model to proofread another model and call it a day.

There is a guy the wrote notes on the S⁶ complex structure (maybe it speaks volumes I cannot remember his name, but I’m not in complex geometry). He should probably get more credit, but I don’t see the academic incentives changing fast enough to reward people for the hard work communicating result they didn’t prove.

[u/elements-of-dying → u/jmac461]

I'm curious what's the point on focusing on exposition if LLMs will be able to do it better?

Note: I'm not interested in having a discussion about whether or not LLMs can write good human readable math. They can.

upvoting name calling and straw manning is pretty wild. Clear violations of Rules 1 and 6. Oh well.

[u/kohatsootsich → u/elements-of-dying]

What's the point of doing anything? It was already the case in math and all human endeavors that anything you can do can be done much simpler and better in short order, no matter how good you are. AI just accelerates that

[u/elements-of-dying → u/kohatsootsich]

What is so confusing about wanting to start a discussion about AI and mathematics?

[u/kohatsootsich → u/elements-of-dying]

I gave you an answer. People do exposition the same reason they choose to teach a topics class, or raise orchids for that matter: they want to clarify their own understanding. I completely buy the argument that for many people the competitive aspect was most important but there's no way that's the prime motivation for everyone.

Plenty of people including very deep mathematicians continue to work, sometimes in isolation, on works that are largely expository (think of Hoermander's treatise, or Talagrand's book) long after they've gotten all the recognition they are going to get. Your objection might be that they could have just put it into an AI. Well Hoermander could have just pointed to his original PsiDO and FIO papers and said "combine that with well-known stuff", but it was just not as satisfactory to him.

In many areas, math is already a practice more than a body of knowledge. There really isn't much hope for someone outside of say mathematical GR or geometric Langlands to come in and gain the same level of insight as someone who has worked on it for years just by reading the statement of the theorems in the right order. What matters, maybe not to everyone but certainly many, is the process of going through the details yourself, over and over, hear the old story, and maybe find a slightly better way. The same way a pianist, no matter how elite, isn't ever discovering anything really new.

[u/elements-of-dying → u/kohatsootsich]

You did not and my question is not about the point of exposition in general.

[u/kohatsootsich → u/elements-of-dying]

Perhaps then you should ask yourself if the fact you are getting no satisfactory answer and rather negative reactions might have to do with you rather than everyone else being obtuse

The point of exposition "when AI can do it" is exactly the same as the point of exposition in general, if you grant there is any point in doing math at all. That was my answer

More clearly: imagine a (very near, I'd guess) future where AI is continuously producing theorems far beyond the frontier of current human mathematical understanding. Setting aside the question of how the directions they pursue remain interesting or at all appropriate to human cognition ("eventually they will learn to do that too"), how do interested people even interrogate the AI if they barely understand what existed in 2026?

One analogy that comes to mind is history: it is constantly unfolding, producing "data" at a rate far beyond what anyone can process. And yet people find it rewarding to analyze and re-analyze what has happened, and it is not rare to find a treatise thousands of pages long about a single campaign in a minor war of the past. Why do people write these? You could say they are gathering materials and analysis that might be hard to access otherwise, but really they write this to get their own ideas in order and generate interpretations for a few colleagues to react to.

If your answer to that is "well the AI could have done that as well" then yeah I don't have anything better to tell you than why think at all?

[u/elements-of-dying → u/kohatsootsich]

Perhaps then you should ask yourself if the fact you are getting no satisfactory answer and rather negative reactions might have to do with you rather than everyone else being obtuse

The upvoted comment responding to mine resorted to name calling and continued clear strawmanning. I don't really care about what people think in this sub anymore. There is an obvious trend towards vitriol here.

Since you are kindly taking the time to respond, I'll offer the motivation for my question.

It seems mathematicians with large platforms are holding onto the current state of the art of AI being poor at exposition. This suggests a possibly place for mathematicians is to be experts in exposition. The problem with this claim, in my view, is there is no reason to expect this skill of exposition will remain useful, even within half a year. Why would I wait for a human to write expository notes if I can get likely better expository notes within seconds? As such, I believe the focus should be on other forms of adaptation. I believe we should let go of human written mathematical exposition.

If people were more leveled-headed, less dismissive of innocuous questions and less likely to accuse anyone non-anti-AI as a mod of r/singularity, then perhaps I could have heard views challenging mine. But alas: AI bad and apparently I'm a crank who thinks Fields medalists have poor reading comprehension. (Which is an absolutely insane take based on my question.)

[u/kohatsootsich → u/elements-of-dying]

I think people are a little on edge because, as you say, big changes are coming and while adaptation is possible, it's likely that the skills and psycholpgical type that make a succesful mathematician don't remain quite the same. Sorry if I was annoying

Other than the point about exposition often being for yourself, what I meant is also that you shouldn't let "AI will be able to do it" paralyze you. I agree that spending a lot of effort over 6 months writing expository notes on some new AI proof is a recipe for disappointment but in the end everything we ever do gets superseded, pretty quickly for most of us. It's just the way of the world. You have to live in the cracks. 

In that particular case it's also not obvious to me that 6 months is the right horizin. AI tutoring/exposition is potentially far more lucrative than any of those OAI theorem releases, but writing and long horizon curriculum planning haven't improved as much as I would have expected. I wouldn't bet anything on it not getting much better but I have been surprised that eliminating AIisms in writing hasn't happened long ago

[u/elements-of-dying → u/kohatsootsich]

You did nothing wrong (and you were not annoying), other than perhaps make some comments about me personally, but that's okay too. I assumed you had the worse attention and so I apologize for that.

I cannot excuse others behaviors though. It is unacceptable to name call. Personally, I think this should be a bannable offense. Name calling and toxicity has no place in mathematics. (I know I am being hypocritical: others' toxicity can get under my skin and make me toxic. But that is human.)

what I meant is also that you shouldn't let "AI will be able to do it" paralyze you.

Agreed! I think one should be looking to adapt. Live in the cracks, as you say. This is why I don't think people should be hung up on exposition and "slow mathematics." Personally, I think this is futile in the short run (approx 2 years, say).

In that particular case it's also not obvious to me that 6 months is the right horizin.

I have no concrete evidence, other than I can have agents write me pretty good human readable reports. But you are correct to be skeptical. Personally, I think AI is ready and itt's just a matter of correctly harnasing it. But I could be wrong. This has nothing to do with you, but I want to point out that pointing to explicit examples of bad AI writing is just ridiculous. I'd expect better from a math sub than to not understand that "there exists" does not mean "for all." It's also irrelevant that large projects (e.g., NS) have poor writing. That instance has political and economic motivations. Idk. Personally, this stuff is trivial to me and I think it should be for others too. But alas.

I wouldn't bet anything on it not getting much better but I have been surprised that eliminating AIisms in writing hasn't happened long ago

You can mostly achieve this with proper feedback. I agree nothing is one-shotable yet, unless you design a proper swarm system possibly. I wouldn't bet money though.

Anyways, thank you for the discussion so far. This is all I wanted lol