While many of humanity’s hardest problems in mathematics have remained unsolved for decades, using AI as a new tool has already proved fruitful, according to Trefor Bazett (University of Victoria). Bazett points to a notoriously difficult problem called the “unit distance problem,” explaining that while AI was able to provide the first solution to the problem, it was human researchers that were able to adapt the proof to solve another significant problem a week later. This combination of human ingenuity and technology is not new, asserts Bazett, with computers having been used to solve problems too expansive for humans since their invention. Despite this, Bazett concludes that many problems in math remain beyond AI’s capabilities, proving the necessity of human mathematicians for the foreseeable future.
