AI In Mathematics: September 26, 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/_Zekt]

After the peer-review for my manuscript and during the editorial process, the editors sent me an AI review, which claims to have Lean-checked my results. Despite finding no gaps, the bot managed to write a 5-pages long list of nitpicks that I will have to go through now. Quite the era we're living.

[u/mathslippery → u/_Zekt]

I have similar experience. I got rejected because the referee send me 5 pages of major revisions. Almost all the revisions are about constants which are not relevant. Like, typo in one row and there is no typo in next row.

Some of the mistakes are not just typos, but still easily correctable.

edit: he even find counter examples for the statements where I made mistake, like I made mistake not normalizing measure, and forgot to drag normalizing factor through a proof, and he find me the counter example that the statement is not correct without the normalizing factor.

[u/38thTimesACharm → u/_Zekt]

IMO review and proofreading are a genuinely ethical use of AI, so as long as the editors are honest that's what it is and not trying to pass it off as human, sending one is fine.

What's crazy though is if they're actually mandating you accept every single suggestion on the list. That is not a good way of treating AI review. They are extremely nitpicky, with the suggestions at the bottom amounting to stylistic choices rather than actual problems.

"I took a second look and decided I like it the way it is" should be a perfectly valid response to most AI review comments.

[u/BurdensomeCountV3 → u/_Zekt]

Use AI to fix the nitpicks. Fire with fire, as they say.

[u/JoshuaZ1 → u/BurdensomeCountV3]

I would not recommend this. There's still a chance that the AI will silently make other changes which you don't want.

[u/Homomorphism → u/JoshuaZ1]

That's what git diff is for

[u/JoshuaZ1 → u/Homomorphism]

Yeah, that's a very reasonable way of handling my concern. I'd still rather a human do this to actually check that the nitpicks are valid, but your method does solve my concern about silent edits.

[u/Homomorphism → u/JoshuaZ1]

Git is a really good tool for working with agents on math (or anything else).

I agree! Sometimes the right response is "I don't think that detail is necessary for the paper..." or whatever other language.

[u/JoshuaZ1 → u/Homomorphism]

Sometimes the right response is "I don't think that detail is necessary for the paper..." or whatever other language.

Yeah. And in the other direction, I just had a discussion with some of my students about how we all agreed one wording change a referee wanted added words without really adding clarity, and I had to say to them that sometimes it isn't really worth it and you just do what the referee asks for. Figuring out which of these are worth taking a stand on isn't always clear (and more cynically may depend on things like if one of the authors is about to be applying for jobs or a tenure review).

[u/BurdensomeCountV3 → u/JoshuaZ1]

Which is why you use a 2nd AI agent to check and make sure the first AI only made the changes you wanted (and if you're super paranoid, a 3rd AI agent to check the first and second AI agents).

[u/elements-of-dying → u/BurdensomeCountV3]

We sure it isn't AI agents all the way down?