DeepMind philosopher: AI felled another Millennium Problem and math is in crisis
coherence · x · 2026-10-31
In a Noema essay, Atoosa Kasirzadeh—research scientist at the DeepMind Institute and assistant professor at CMU—chronicles how unreleased frontier AI systems recently formalized Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, found a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, generated hundreds of manuscripts claiming to prove important open problems, and on October 26 felled another Clay Millennium Prize problem. Mathematicians have reacted with optimism, anxiety, and disorientation: in July PhD student Kirwin Hampshire published 'The Dark Night of Mathematics,' describing a profound spiritual crisis at the prospect of human obsolescence. The essay asks what mathematics means when the human struggle, aesthetic judgment, and value of discovery are automated—AI is a transformative chapter, but not the final one.
Related event: Noema Essay Envisions a New Dawn for Mathematical Progress in the AI Era(6 posts)→
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