AI system proves the Exponential Time Hypothesis false, result verified in Lean
burny_tech · x · 2026-10-28
A computer-science collaboration AI system claims to have proved the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) false, with the result subsequently verified in Lean. ETH is a longstanding conjecture about the computational complexity of Boolean satisfiability, deeply related to P vs NP. Widely believed true, it has been used in hundreds of papers to derive conditional hardness results across graph theory, computational biology, databases, computational geometry and more. If it holds, a large body of conditional lower bounds built on ETH would be shaken — a landmark event for AI-assisted mathematics.
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