Commenters raise questions about AI's role in the proof and students' understanding
2 Sep 14 · 13d ago · 1 post · 10 comments · 2 sources · development 2 of 2
Hacker News commenters debate whether the students genuinely understood the graduate-level work or whether AI effectively solved it for them. Some question how much credit is due to the postdoc versus the students, while others note the achievement highlights a new skill: effectively using AI to solve complex problems.
“This looks like a graduate-level proof. Did these high school students really understand what they were doing? I'd like to see what they have to say.”
esafakAayush Bathija High school student, lead authorPrince Rohatgi High school student, co-authorDaniel Soskin UCLA postdoctoral researcher, advisorJune Huh Fields Medalist, pioneered Lorentzian polynomial theory
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note HEAVILY> The students heavily utilized AI assistants, specifically Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, for computational exploration, proof idea generation, and editing.this is a bit like Enhanced Olympics(https://www.enhanced.com), except that you have someone else compete for you.My issue is that it makes it hard to distinguish real insight/work…
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Real title includes:> Unsolved Problem by Fields Medalist Breached by Two High School Students with AIMy title recommendation: Fields Medalist Problem Solved With AIThey used AI for “computation, proof idea generation, and editing assistance”.It’s a bit odd how they list the AIs used - “Claude Opus 5, Anthropic and ChatGPT Sol5.6 were used for…
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This looks like a graduate-level proof. Did these high school students really understand what they were doing? I'd like to see what they have to say.
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Working backwards from the Navier-Stokes solution, I was able to walk Astra through the path used to solve it. It took some formulation, starting with the problem, then challenging it to look closer at the specific path, and iterating when it got stuck, it was able to reach the solution.
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I sort of wonder if effectively using AI to solve math problems is a skill in its own right, distinct from traditional mathematical skills. I don’t just mean “prompt engineering” either. More so figuring out how to combine agents with other tools and approaches in an effective way.
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Great short term achievement but humanity is better served by these kids doing it without AI. The ideas have to come from the next generation (eg would we be worried if a 5 year old wrote the great American novel with AI or not?)
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the fact that you have to encourage these models and tell them that they can solve these problems and warm up on easier problems seems to indicate that there's something to AI pairing above and beyond prompt
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It means that the solution is merely an interpolation of existing work and not fundamentally innovative as AI can only regurgitate, never creating something new.
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Haven't you heard? Fields Medalists believe it only counts when they do the solving - not the unwashed.
All 2 developments of High School Students Solve Fields Medalist's Open Problem… →
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