Claude autonomously built a 'math harness' and disproved Smale's mean value conjecture
maxleiter · x · 2026-09-06
Vercel's maxleiter says that when he prompted Claude on how it approaches math problems, the model spun up its own 'math harness' in Slack and autonomously found counterexamples disproving Smale's mean value conjecture. Mathematician @alpoge confirmed they'd observed the same disproof and noted the Köthe conjecture connection. More details promised in a future write-up.
Related event: Claude Built Its Own Math Harness and Refuted the Smale Mean Conjecture(2 posts)→
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