Mathematician littmath: the community should reward AI 'last-mile' work less
littmath · x · 2026-09-06
Mathematician Daniel Litt and Scott Armstrong discuss how math should adapt its credit system to AI. Using the recent percolation breakthrough as an example, Armstrong argues Kozma and Nitzan deserve 'most' of the credit — the story is 'Claude proved the lemmas needed to confirm their ideas,' not 'Claude solved the problem' — and with AI they'd likely have finished in 2026. Litt agrees the community should reward last-mile work less to preserve its values.
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