Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by vouaobrasil on Sunday August 09, 2026 @04:48AM
(#49229634)
I suspect tools like this will change human behaviour in the future so that no one really understands the math any more. If a solution to the Riemann hypothesis is found with it, I wouldn't be surprised if the person finding it didn't even understand analytic continuation. And that those that do just click like and scroll to the next problem.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by Hackbraten on Sunday August 09, 2026 @08:14AM
(#49230714)
Hasn’t this been the case for human-made proofs too?
For example, Andrew Wiles’s famous proof touched a number of different, barely-related mathematical fields that no single person could allegedly peer-review it on their own. That was in the 1990s.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by vouaobrasil on Sunday August 09, 2026 @11:45AM
(#49232479)
No there were a few people that could. And in principle, if Andrew Wiles did it, others could too and were motivated to do it. What I'm saying is that people will be conditioned to explore less on their own with tools like this and thus fewer and fewer will bother understanding the proofs.
Math is getting very specialized it's true, and I think that's part of the motivation to use AI. The specialization is itself a bit of a problem, so AI is simultaneously exposing that and hiding it under another layer of abstraction.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by dolia on Monday August 10, 2026 @05:57AM
(#49241589)
This applies to a lot of scientific and practical (like construction) topics in general. Everyone relies on someone else (or something else) knowing what to do.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by amitport on Sunday August 09, 2026 @05:46AM
(#49229910)
I've been considering something like this for a while.
It only makes sense as a free, open-source, decentralized sharing protocol (where anyone can host theorems and no one can limit sharing them).
If a company were to manage to commercialize this, it would end public open research.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by philipfweiss on Monday August 10, 2026 @01:33AM
(#49239568)
(Project creator here):
I have 0 interest in commercializing this.
Im taking a lot of inspiration from MathOverflow, where I’ve been a user for several years. I think there is a protocol approach to this project that can be built, but it’s not what I’m building. I’m optimizing more for building in community features, since that is the genre of site I have enjoyed using in the past.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by vatsachak on Sunday August 09, 2026 @12:26PM
(#49232867)
Is there any advantage of this over an agent using a Google search?
I feel like the main benefit of such an endeavor would be to create a centralized database of mathematical theorems. But why aren't we using Lean theorems as the nodes instead?
The holy grail would be constructing an encoder that takes in a lean theorem and produces a meaningful latent vector so that whatever future math AI can instantly look up previously used "tricks" as opposed to only theorems.
I've met Andrej and he's obviously a genius so I'm sure this is useful.
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by igorkraw on Sunday August 09, 2026 @09:21AM
(#49231168)
Fun, I've been building a similar idea for the last year in my evenings, but focusing on human curation and human consumption and ensuring the humans understand the concepts correctly. Gonna be nice to have all these orthogonal projects complementing one another
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by philipfweiss on Monday August 10, 2026 @01:37AM
(#49239601)
(Project creator here): Someone actually posted the site without me- I wasn’t planning on launching for a few weeks! If you see any issues, feel free to report them and i’ll get on fixing them right away!
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by timmg on Sunday August 09, 2026 @01:35PM
(#49233514)
Why?
If you wanted to build a website right now, why would you hand-code an ugly version when you could get an LLM to do it quickly, cheaply and have it much better looking?
Re:TheoremDB · A public workspace for machine mathematics
by philipfweiss on Monday August 10, 2026 @01:19AM
(#49239493)
Project creator here- I really did not expect it to get posted on hackernews! A nice surprise for sure though.
Seems like someone found the site and posted without me.
I am still working on the site and was planning on launching in a few weeks. There are some usability issues and some
features on my roadmap I haven’t gotten to yet.
That said- if folks are interested in helping contributing new problems/proofs, hunting bugs, or giving suggestions, we have a discord https://discord.gg/ds23BgPq6
For example, Andrew Wiles’s famous proof touched a number of different, barely-related mathematical fields that no single person could allegedly peer-review it on their own. That was in the 1990s.
Math is getting very specialized it's true, and I think that's part of the motivation to use AI. The specialization is itself a bit of a problem, so AI is simultaneously exposing that and hiding it under another layer of abstraction.
If a company were to manage to commercialize this, it would end public open research.
https://www.math.inc/vision
Just use lean
I have 0 interest in commercializing this.
Im taking a lot of inspiration from MathOverflow, where I’ve been a user for several years. I think there is a protocol approach to this project that can be built, but it’s not what I’m building. I’m optimizing more for building in community features, since that is the genre of site I have enjoyed using in the past.
I feel like the main benefit of such an endeavor would be to create a centralized database of mathematical theorems. But why aren't we using Lean theorems as the nodes instead?
The holy grail would be constructing an encoder that takes in a lean theorem and produces a meaningful latent vector so that whatever future math AI can instantly look up previously used "tricks" as opposed to only theorems.
I've met Andrej and he's obviously a genius so I'm sure this is useful.
I’m active on the discord, feel free to report any bugs there. https://discord.gg/ds23BgPq6
Like an earnest project in this direction would probably look like a 90s html page
If you wanted to build a website right now, why would you hand-code an ugly version when you could get an LLM to do it quickly, cheaply and have it much better looking?
Seems like someone found the site and posted without me.
I am still working on the site and was planning on launching in a few weeks. There are some usability issues and some features on my roadmap I haven’t gotten to yet.
That said- if folks are interested in helping contributing new problems/proofs, hunting bugs, or giving suggestions, we have a discord https://discord.gg/ds23BgPq6