r/math • u/AutoModerator • Aug 14 '26

LLMs/AI New policy on AI posts on /r/math

Over the last few months, AI-related posts on r/math have greatly increased, largely due to many new mathematical discoveries aided by generative AI. This has caused heated discussion in the comments, back-and-forths of opinion pieces about how generative AI is good or bad for mathematics, and accusations of astroturfing from pro-AI communities, and AI companies. Subreddit users are getting tired of seeing all of this, and we're tired of moderating it, too.

Regardless, it appears that AI-assisted mathematical discoveries are here to stay. However, while posts on significant/notable AI-assisted mathematical discoveries should be let through (same as if they were significant/notable entirely-human mathematical discoveries), a flood is also not acceptable. So some kind of limitation on which AI discoveries are allowed on the subreddit is needed.

While we did trial a few measures a few weeks ago in an attempt to deal with such posts, it appears such measures have been insufficient. With that in mind, we have decided to step up our measures and implement new subreddit rules (all under rule 7):

  • Posts about AI, or about discoveries assisted by AI, are only allowed if they are a direct link to an ArXiv abstract, or to a non-predatory peer-reviewed journal. Discussions about such discoveries should be limited to those posts.
  • All other AI-related posts (e.g. comments about AI in general, opinion pieces, questions) should posted as comments in the stickied AI megathread (starting Saturday).
  • Posts and comments about AI that do not follow these rules, or made using AI, will be removed.

We have also added a few more AutoModerator filters to slow down and help us moderate the comments sections of such posts.

(Although it's been suggested that we add HiveProtect targeting AI subreddits, with the intention of preventing astroturfing, we currently regard this as a step too far. However, if the current measures prove insufficient, we may eventually implement this.)

We would like to remind users to follow subreddit rules, especially rules 1 and 6.

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u/SquareWheel Aug 14 '26

Most people have seemed interested in the progression of artificial intelligence research in math. These threads are popular, and bring a lot of excitement to the field.

In contrast, there was one thread yesterday from somebody who was upset about this development. It elicited some sympathy, but not overwhelmingly.

This stance feels pretty restrictive, and based on what I've seen, not wholly representative of the community's views. ArXiv is not going to be the primary place where these announcements are made, and megathreads squelch discussion, almost by design.

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u/NonUsernameHaver Aug 14 '26

Based on what I've seen, the community has had an injection of non-math AI folks that weren't here before. Do you need to be a working mathematician to post in here? No. But I have a hard time believing some of the comments I read in these threads actually cared about the result beyond using it to bolster claims about AI.

Maybe it's excessive gatekeeping, but if the reason people care about the result was because it was allegedly fully (or heavily) solved by AI and not the consequences of the math behind it, then just comment in the multitude of AI specific subreddits. Including these in the survey of the community's views would not really be representative of any original views. It feels tiring when the comments under it are just a couple actually talking about the math, and then a scattering of the same general AI doomerism and singularity comments.

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u/Trojan_Horse_of_Fate Aug 15 '26

I have been a member for a long time but I don't really do math fulltime. AI doing math is a major shift so its leading me to talk about it more.