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"Our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us"

"Our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us"

2 comments

·November 1, 2025

https://xcancel.com/wtgowers/status/1984340182351634571

"I crossed an interesting threshold yesterday, which I think many other mathematicians have been crossing recently as well. In the middle of trying to prove a result, I identified a statement that looked true and that would, if true, be useful to me.

"Instead of trying to prove it, I asked GPT5 about it, and in about 20 seconds received a proof. The proof relied on a lemma that I had not heard of (the statement was a bit outside my main areas), so although I am confident I'd have got there in the end.

"the time it would have taken me would probably have been of order of magnitude an hour (an estimate that comes with quite wide error bars). So it looks as though we have entered the brief but enjoyable era where our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us.

"PS In case anyone's worried that it used a lemma I hadn't heard of, I checked that the lemma was not a hallucination."

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musicale

> we have entered the brief but enjoyable era where our research is greatly sped up by AI but AI still needs us

Well that's comforting.

kenjackson

For some reason this sort of thing bothers a lot of people. I think it’s great that we have a new tool in the toolbelt.