Terence TaoWe are transitioning in mathematics from an era of proof scarcity to an era of proof abundance, but our mathematical infrastructure and culture has not yet adapted to this. As mentioned previously, there is now a strong (and growing) impedance mismatch between the three core components of mathematical problem solving: proof generation, proof verification, and proof digestion.
An early sign of this transition could be seen in the chaotic response to the initial "First Proof" challenge, in which many more potentially viable solutions to the given problems were produced than could be readily verified or digested, either by experts or by automated tools. And now we are seeing the same impedance mismatch at the Erdos problem website, where (since the release of GPT 5.5, as well as the highly publicized recent solution to Erdos problem #1196) there is now an unprecedented backlog of nearly twenty claimed full or partial solutions "pending assessment": https://github.com/teorth/erdosproblems/wiki/AI-contributions-to-Erd%C5%91s-problems . (Prior to this recent surge, this category contained one or two solutions at a time at best.) (1/5)
Fabrizio Musacchio
European Commission
Björn Brembs
@Co_Biologists
Carl Zimmer
