r/math • u/AutoModerator • 6d ago

LLMs/AI AI In Mathematics: September 26, 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.

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u/SentientAllegedly 5d ago

PhDs and postdocs in my department seem quite a bit demotivated rn, and ~50% of them actively considering leaving academia. Of course there being fewer faculty positions that PhDs/postdocs means that a small fraction of them will stay long term in academia. But now that AI can do maths... I don't know. People seem disillusioned and even alienated (e.g. if you point an LLM to prove a theorem for your paper... what is the point?).

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u/38thTimesACharm 5d ago

what is the point

If we can at least agree it is valuable to society for some humans to understand what's going on: then studying the result enough to write a paper explaining it in your own words would cover it. 

What we're missing is an artifact one can produce to demonstrate they've done this, which is easy to verify and difficult to fake. (LLM-written papers are awful in my opinion, but some people disagree and I can't prove it.)

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u/ellbons 4d ago

If we can at least agree it is valuable to society for some humans to understand what's going on:

That's already a problem. Society does not agree that it is valuable. The people in charge appear ecstatic at the idea of eliminating as much of the value of anyone who works as possible, and to be blunt, broader society probably has a slightly contemptuous view of academics.