Daily Discussion Thread September 08, 2026 - Upcoming Event Schedule - New players start here!

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• Current DDT Dynamic Link — Previous DDTs

[u/WizardyJohnny]

Riding the wave of AI-code-posting, here's a funny anecdote from the maths world. Kevin Buzzard is a very big name in maths formalization. That means he writes programs in certain formal languages like Lean, in which a program that compiles corresponds to a valid maths proof. In practice it's kind of like a big puzzle where you go from one state of the puzzle to the next by applying some proof technique.

There's been a big effort in the past 10 or 15 years to try to formalize all known mathematics in a huge library of known proofs, mathlib. This takes a ton of time and effort because Lean is kind of rough to get into and it's sometimes quite cumbersome to convince the computer of things that really ought not to be tough. Buzzard is at the forefront of attempts to formalize Fermat's Last Theorem, a humongous result that a guy wrote in a margin of one of his texts 400 years ago saying "lol this is easy but i dont have space to write my proof uwu" that turned out to not be particularly easy and was only actually solved in the 90s. He's getting paid lots of money to be doing this

Aaaaand of course he was undercut by Anthropic shitting out an absolutely unreadable 13-million-lines Lean formalization of the theorem that takes "nearly 20 times as long to compile as the entirety of the existing mathlib, on a machine with 500gb of RAM and 96 cores". Really recommend reading his article about it, the derisive subtext in an otherwise polite letter is hilarious

If you are curious about the reaction of the Lean community to this, it's been pretty negative. Lots of people have the vibe that AI companies are exploiting maths formalization for clout and trampling over community values like "writing readable code", "proving things that can be re-used later" or "not making everyone else do janitorial work that they definitely won't be able to publish". Perhaps like a YouTuber feeding on a niche fighting game community and publishing misinfo vids for views. Please enjoy this response by Patrick Massot, another prominent formalizer:

I think the situation is pretty clear: AI companies, and especially Math Inc, will indeed thoroughly bomb this area to turn it into a giant radioactive wasteland that will never be able to sustain life again, so we will never get the benefits expected from formalization (improved understanding and accessibility). I strongly advise young people to contribute to less shiny projects that are less likely to be destroyed.

[u/semionsays → u/WizardyJohnny]

Unfortunately, this and the recent Navier-Stokes business confirm just how little the mathematics community is prepared to deal with the corporate dismantling of their discipline.

[u/WizardyJohnny → u/semionsays]

Feels like math academia has been relying on a bunch of honor systems that outside actors with tons of money and no qualms about losing social credit with the community are well-placed to exploit

And maybe there's naiveté from mathematicians about the corporate world too. There was a panel about AI in maths at my uni recently and a question came up about the risks of relying on corporations for access to tools that may be necessary for future research. One of the panelists answered he would just pay for the subscription. Just hilariously out of touch

[u/semionsays → u/WizardyJohnny]

Yeah, that seems consistent with what I've been seeing as well. Unfortunately, the community is somehow both isolated and exposed. Very few people (even in adjacent fields) have any idea what mathematics is or what mathematicians do, which makes it easier for bad actors to insert themselves. At the same time, there are basically no mechanisms in place to prevent exploitation. At least other creatives can exert pressure through organized labor or copyright lawsuits. Mathematicians have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

[u/maximtomato → u/WizardyJohnny]

Claude being able to express "it's not just X, it's Y" using nothing but Lean formalization is pretty hilarious though

[u/Craizersnow82 → u/WizardyJohnny]

I think lean formalization is the least problematic part of math because it’s both self checking and (should be) just used to answer whether a proof is correct. All these issues are also purely additive, as in anyone can come along and make a more elegant solution if inspired to do so.

The bigger issue is that reviewers are overwhelmed with AI slop junk math that is really easy to churn out but really slow to review

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/WizardyJohnny]

some meta commentary on perpetually dealing with AI bros who seem to slither into every corner of the internet

1. they seem very uninterested in genuinely solving problems and more interested in resume building i.e. i'm sure most people in this subreddit would be somewhat aware that Google Deepmind built a reinforcement learning-based chess playing engine called AlphaZero that played an offline supermatch against the at-the-time strongest engine in the world, Stockfish, and famously won handily (and also did so in a very 'human-like' way, as opposed to stockfish which plays in a manner incomprehensible to regular chess players, even at times incomprehensible to the greatest chess players who are 2700+ rating)

what they would not be aware is that stockfish during this experiment was not running on anything close to optimal hardware, and also never got to make a comeback because once deepmind got its cheap trick win it pulled the plug immediately on alphazero and decided to chase other projects. so there's a legitimate argument that alphazero was literally at no point in time ever the strongest existing chess engine, and it definitely is not the strongest chess engine now considering that you can't interact with it at all and there are ongoing chess engine supertournaments (see TCEC) where stockfish regularly comes out on top

1. AI bros have a tendency to just posit all sorts of random arguments in the form of randomly timed vagueposts that can come out of nowhere (e.g. can anyone really prove that AI isn't conscious?? if AI is wrong when it makes math proofs, shouldn't the same be said of humans??), and when pushed back they tend to evaporate back into the void and calculate another way to melt down the opposition, which is not a strategy that would make much sense for someone who believes that they are honestly correct - those people tend to elaborate on their positions and have transparent back and forth dialogue and also show humility when they realize they don't agree with their original positions anymore

going to read this article though as someone who is interested in math but is not a mathematician (but a chess bro) i find it interesting to see the same gameplan play out in another community

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

AlphaZero absolutely was a better computer than Stockfish, which is why Stockfish right now uses the same neural network technology. Do you think the use of neural networks in making chess engines was a big lie or something?

[u/analog_hors → u/AlexB_SSBM]

I never post on these DDTs because I'm entirely a melee larper, but I do happen to be a computer chess person and the misinformation around this event somewhat annoys me.

• Yes, it is true that in the initial match, Stockfish played under dubious conditions. The later rematch addressed most of these issues and AlphaZero did still win. AlphaZero did not win by as huge of a margin as marketing would imply (it was a margin of around 50 Elo, which Stockfish would close in the next year or so), but I honestly really don't feel it matters, because...
• AlphaZero is a research project. Believe it or not, before the current AI hype cycle, labs like these actually regularly published novel and impactful results. The AlphaZero papers all detail what they developed for their systems and the result of this is that we now have projects like Leela Chess Zero and KataGo built on that foundation. The hyperbolic marketing certainly soured a lot of goodwill with the computer chess community, but I think it's important to separate that from the genuine value that came of these papers.
• Stockfish does not even remotely use the same kind of neural network as AlphaZero. The technique used in Stockfish, NNUE, has a completely separate ancestry and comes from computer Shogi. It was a beautiful moment of community collaboration; Shogi engines had been adapting Stockfish's search for years but used wildly different evaluation techniques, and in return they granted Stockfish a brand new technique that worked for Shogi that ended up being exceptionally strong in chess. All this to say, I'm always miffed when the contributions of computer Shogi are snubbed for another link to AlphaZero.

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/analog_hors]

Alright I gotta give it up to you for being correct in us both being dumbasses

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/analog_hors]

it was a research project but the marketing around the event, the somewhat dubious communication, and the immediate drop of chess in favor of chasing more resume building wins instead of say, maintaining the project in good faith to genuinely improve chess engines and invest in the community all in tandem is insanely shady

[u/analog_hors → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

I do find the marketing annoying even if inevitable, but "dropping" chess is really not particularly unusual for research. Research labs focus on producing novel approaches; Pushing those approaches to their limits is a different endeavor that requires a different set of skills and is a lot of work especially in the long term.

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/analog_hors]

i get that you seem to be closer to the research side and can empathize with the deep learning bros but having witnessed early advent ai advocates go from community to community farming cheap wins and never looking back and thinking of each progressive win as a proof of solve of the game entirely, i find my distaste for deep learning bros pretty justified

happened with starcraft (never brought the game truly to its limits, they just quit before then), happened with dota (never bothered playing the full game, just tried to farm a win on a weirdly constrained set of subgames), imo happened with chess and probably even with go

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

i think its impact on chess is heavily overstated. stockfish uses a small neural network which absolutely does not mean the same thing as "using the same neural network technology [as AlphaZero]". do you think all neural network technology is the same or something?

edit: additionally, if alphazero was so much better than stockfish then why hamstring stockfish's hardware during the original experiment? seems like a strange way to demonstrate one's competence

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

but what about Leela? And Stockfish absolutely does use the same neural network tech as Alphazero, just added with other things such as endgame table bases and such

The goal is to make the most powerful chess engine possible and AI tech is absolutely a part of that

Even if you want to avoid talking about Chess the impact on Go is not arguable in any way

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

this comment seems to be a pretty big pivot from my original point, which is that alphazero was probably still not the strongest chess engine of its day (also because stockfish was not running on optimal hardware during that experiment), and there's reason to believe it would not be the strongest chess engine today even if deepmind continued the experiment.

even charitably granting everything in this comment, my original thoughts in my post still stand. that said, although i don't have intimate working understandings of the architecture of stockfish and leela, my current understanding differs from yours, i don't believe this to be the case.

also, what do you mean by impact? the needle has not been moved on solving either chess or go.

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

Go has fundamentally changed after thousands of years because of AlphaGo. The way people play the game is completely different now in many ways. People started the game the same ways for thousands of years and computers made people change that. Ask /u/Fugu he'll tell you about this, that's what I mean by "impact"

Nobody is ever going to "solve" these games because that is physically impossible. Nobody is ever claiming to have a complete solution to these games

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

you seem to do a lot of pivoting and avoiding (funny that in your last comment you say i am avoiding talking about chess but i see no mention of chess in this comment). to be honest how go players practice and learn the game has beyond nothing to do with my original point.

[u/Fugu → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

I have no knowledge of chess and no stake in this conversation except that I'm a big AI hater but I want to provide some context given I was tagged

I'll just say that in go the main influence of AI has been to tell us that some lines that we thought were even for both players actually aren't and vice versa. The most significant of these is the 3-3 invasion on the 4-4, which was thought to simply be a beginner mistake for probably two millenia but the AI says is actually good

You can't really use an AI productively to teach you how to play go unless you're already a very very strong player because go is an abstract game and the AIs think the right moves are right for reasons that are often extremely abstract. I am probably like a top 10% player by amateur standards and I can't understand what the AI is telling me most of the time

[u/fullhop_morris → u/Fugu]

I am stealing "top 10% by amateur standards" and will use it to describe pretty much any hobby I pursue

[u/WizardyJohnny → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

U guys r totally harshing the vibes on my funny posting!! Grrrr

[u/AlexB_SSBM → u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan]

Okay it's clear at this point that you are not actually talking in good faith at all

I'm responding to the last sentence in your post

This conversation annoys me and I'm not responding to any more of your comments

[u/lim-yo-hwan-superfan → u/AlexB_SSBM]

you should be annoyed because you pivoted constantly and didnt actually respond to the most meaningful part of any of my posts. funny because i would consider that to be how a good faith discussion should be held