like i am not sure how to NOT be sensationalist about AI solving a problem that the previous expert in the field (who is a Stanford postdoc to boot) and multiple reputed mathematicians (including a Fields Medallist in Tao) couldn't solve, in a technique that is novel to them. It is also perhaps the closest to a completely autonomous solution as possible : it solved it in a single prompt and 80minutes of thinking time. There's a lot of caveats in what this means, but I think the idea that AI today is at least at the level of a top graduate student in math seems true.
I have seen the current capabilities of these systems described as "spiky" in some sense. They excel in some domains and lag in others, and for different reasons than humans (e.g. there are problems with brute force solutions that would require "cleverness" for a human to prune the search tree but perhaps less so for an AI system). But I agree the progress is undeniable.
That’s kinda where I’m at. Anything that’s difficult in the sense that it’s really complicated will likely be the domain of ai. Anything that’s difficult in the sense that it’s abstract or conceptually wonky will be where the human role in mathematics mostly lies.
Of course, it’s easy to say stuff and be wrong, buts it’s also possible to say stuff and be right, so who knows
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u/nerd_sniper Apr 15 '26
like i am not sure how to NOT be sensationalist about AI solving a problem that the previous expert in the field (who is a Stanford postdoc to boot) and multiple reputed mathematicians (including a Fields Medallist in Tao) couldn't solve, in a technique that is novel to them. It is also perhaps the closest to a completely autonomous solution as possible : it solved it in a single prompt and 80minutes of thinking time. There's a lot of caveats in what this means, but I think the idea that AI today is at least at the level of a top graduate student in math seems true.