frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The Maxwell Conjecture Is False (GPT 5.6 Sol)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27197
68•rahen•3h ago

Comments

jdc-pub•3h ago
Looks like the figures are cut off?
smallerize•3h ago
The experimental HTML view is messed up, but the actual PDF is fine.
beernet•3h ago
On the one-hand side, it's really impressive how LLMs drive mathematics forward, and this pace is only accelerating very quickly.

At the same time, most of the proofs I've looked at appear super messy and chaotic to me (while still being correct of course, so it doesn't matter). LLMs do not care about "elegance" the way human beings do, which is a big advantage. LLMs for mathematics is such a great fit on many levels. Can't wait for a significant breakthrough, prove P=NP and all hell breaks loose.

dcsommer•57m ago
Sure they care about elegance, or at least brevity. Minimizing tokens out, or generally "token efficiency," is part of the objective function for these systems. It doesn't mean they are perfect at it though.
senorrib•56m ago
You clearly haven't used Claude to generate code or documentation.
nelox•50m ago
"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price" - S.R. Hadden
KPGv2•24m ago
Personally, I've found city roads to be more reliable than the private roads where I live.
Someone•42m ago
> Minimizing tokens out, or generally "token efficiency," is part of the objective function for these systems.

First time I heard that, and I doubt it. Don’t customers pay for output tokens? If so, why would a company specifically spend time training their LLM to generate fewer?

yreg•34m ago
So they can charge more per token and decrease the pressure on their infra.
pdonis•28m ago
> most of the proofs I've looked at appear super messy and chaotic to me (while still being correct of course, so it doesn't matter)

How do you know they're correct if they're super messy and chaotic?

KPGv2•25m ago
I've driven back roads in Ireland. Super messy and chaotic. I was still able to use a map to get to my destination.
_jayhack_•21m ago
formal verifiability e.g. vi Lean
hawtads•22m ago
> LLMs do not care about "elegance" the way human beings do, which is a big advantage.

It's just a matter of time before you can post train it for elegance too. Mathematical proofs in particular can be formally verified automatically which is a big advantage.

jmalicki•16m ago
I've actually been involved in annotation projects doing RLHF to train LLMs to do exactly that. It's not a matter of time, it's already happening - it's just seemingly lower priority than "profitable" projects like post-training LLMs to replace white collar workers.
tcp_handshaker•12m ago
>> post-training LLMs to replace white collar workers.

And I look forward to a single example where this happened....

pitched•5m ago
Before LLMs, empire building was a very large incentive to hire. Teams tended to become larger than they needed to be so the boss feels good about their life choices.

LLMs do not fix this problem, they make it worse. Instead of the team being oversized, they’re now way oversized. It is still in everyone’s best interest to look busy anyways and LLMs do help a lot with that.

ainch•9m ago
I'm not sure that elegance will be so easy to train for, the same way that writing skill has plateaued (or arguably declined) since earlier models. "Have you solved the problem" is verifiable, but questions of taste are harder to pin down.
js8•9m ago
I agree, counterexample to P!=NP would be great. I tried but it's a mess.
layer8•5m ago
I’m pretty sure “counterexample” is the wrong word here.
Good4boothee•2m ago
Isn't it a bit Catch 22 anyway? If someone finds a algorithm to reduce some NP task X to class P, then that just means X wasn't a true NP task and P!=NP is still undecided?
josefritzishere•54m ago
This is so inelegant I can't tell if it's accurate or not. ...On the other hand, I can't solve it myself.
amelius•54m ago
Ok, who gets the credit?

Does this work like a bug bounty program, where OpenAI pays you if you find a nice application for ChatGPT?

chorsestudios•34m ago
No but the Clay Mathematics Institute will give you $1,000,000 if you solve one of the 6 remaining Millennium Prize Problems, and if you solve certain Erdos problems you can get $10-10,000.
echelon•22m ago
Even if you use AI tools?
muglug•19m ago
Yes. But you’ll spend more in tokens than you’ll get back from prize money.
JPLeRouzic•29m ago
Please, what does that mean for Maxwell equations? For electromagnetism?

(Wikipedia redirects Maxwell's conjecture to Maxwell equations).

pdonis•25m ago
> what does that mean for Maxwell equations?

Nothing. They're still just as valid as they were before.

> For electromagnetism?

In practical terms, nothing significant. It's not going to change how anyone builds devices that use electromagnetism.

gjskngnf•18m ago
The Maxwell conjecture is a toy problem. The existence or nonexistence of a bound on the number of equilibrium points in an electrostatic arrangement of point charges doesn’t change much. I say that as an EE but not a specialist in electromagnetism.
olirex99•20m ago
Seems like that anyone can now prove math conjecture. Maybe someone already prove some math problem and is not even aware of it.
layer8•3m ago
Disprove, you mean.
d_burfoot•17m ago
Tip for smart science-y young people: think about a career in experimental physics. Experimental data is the complement of theoretical power. Since theory can be provided cheaply by LLMs, experimental ability is now the bottleneck for progress in physics.

I expect to see frontier labs or startups hiring experimentalists to provide data for LLMs to analyze, pushing towards breakthroughs in areas like room-temperature superconductors and fusion.

stubbi•7m ago
Until we got robots doing that
qarl2•14m ago
Lies, obviously. AI is worthless.

EDIT: Guys! Sarcasm!

mellosouls•11m ago
Not to denigrate the moment (AI ingress into theory which this is a part of) or the result here, but these headlines are perhaps overstating the importance - some of the theories and conjectures are available for AI-assisted exploration because they are quite niche and not very important.

Maxwell's name being invoked here for instance implies a hundred year old foundational problem like Fermat, but it's just a recent conjecture that was inspired by reflections from the great man on his work.

ChrisMarshallNY•1m ago
I thought it was about getting Ghislaine to come clean...

I'll show myself out...

tcp_handshaker•9m ago
"The idea behind this construction was suggested by an LLM (OpenAI’s GPT- 5.6 Sol). The authors have verified the mathematical details and have written the argument in their own words. Computer algebra software (Mathematica, Maple) was used to verify computations and produce visualisations"

Having the title "The Maxwell Conjecture Is False (GPT 5.6 Sol)" instead of "The Maxwell Conjecture Is False" is editorializing

Syzygies•5m ago
It is mathematical folklore that one should attempt to prove a conjecture by day, disprove it by night. Jordan Ellenberg recently popularized this in his 2014 book. He and I both heard this from Barry Mazur, but it dates at least to Bing, if not antiquity.

What is the purpose of mathematics? To be the architect of new conventions by seeing clearly past the old? If so, believing that the entire point is proving statements is a poor start. Bill Thurston was a visionary who happened to prove a great deal of what he saw, but his influence was his vision.

For those of us who like to understand every line of code we generate, and have labored for years to learn how to make best use of AI, a factor of two is a reasonable estimate for our productivity gain.

For those of us who believe mathematics is about achieving human understanding, having machines decide what's true and what isn't makes a night and day difference. Again, about a factor of two.

DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 Intelligence, Performance and Price Analysis

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v4-flash-ga
304•theanonymousone•7h ago•147 comments

The Maxwell Conjecture Is False (GPT 5.6 Sol)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.27197
69•rahen•3h ago•37 comments

Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI

https://blog.google/security/chrome-stronger-with-every-update/
323•Garbage•7h ago•281 comments

The session you cannot take with you

https://earendil.com/posts/session-portability/
613•apitman•11h ago•167 comments

Winding Down Artichoke Ruby

https://hyperbo.la/w/winding-down-artichoke-ruby/
17•ksec•5d ago•1 comments

Show HN: Gander, an Android file viewer that asks for no permissions at all

https://github.com/mokshablr/gander
157•mokshablr•9h ago•59 comments

JEP 401: Value Objects (Preview) merged to OpenJDK master

https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/31120
197•mfiguiere•10h ago•116 comments

DeepSeek-V4-Flash Update

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/updates/
476•dnhkng•9h ago•240 comments

Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub

https://github.blog/changelog/2026-07-30-stacked-pull-requests-are-now-in-public-preview/
738•tomzorz•22h ago•253 comments

Tasklet (YC P26) Is Hiring a Customer Success Engineer

https://tasklet.ai/careers/customer-success-engineer
1•mayop100•3h ago

The End of an Era

https://hughhowey.com/the-end-of-an-era/
234•harscoat•3h ago•256 comments

Detect Dark Matter's Mark from Your Backyard

https://spectrum.ieee.org/dark-matter
17•Brajeshwar•47m ago•0 comments

Moonshot built on 20k Nvidia chip cluster from Alibaba

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-31/moonshot-s-kimi-built-on-20-000-nvidia-chip-cl...
31•gk1•1h ago•13 comments

Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

https://deepmind.google/blog/gemini-robotics-2-brings-whole-body-intelligence-to-robots/
599•ai2027•23h ago•487 comments

I flagged two research papers for fake authors and both were accepted as orals

https://geospatialml.com/posts/reviewing-ai-slop/
255•volumes94•16h ago•127 comments

The mean means nothing: data visualization to debug a latency problem

https://fzakaria.com/2026/07/27/the-mean-means-nothing
90•fanf2•2d ago•17 comments

Premier league bans gambling sponsors

https://www.footyheadlines.com/2646571793/betting-ban-takes-effect-no-more-gambling-sponsors-in-t...
170•paoliniluis•15h ago•49 comments

Better to Beg Forgiveness

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/31/just-do-it/
13•hn_acker•1h ago•4 comments

We shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever: On weird fiction

https://clereviewofbooks.com/we-shall-dwell-amidst-wonder-and-glory-for-ever-on-weird-fiction/
38•plimp•1d ago•0 comments

The fragile foundations of CoT monitoring

https://web.stanford.edu/~cgpotts/blog/cot/
3•jxmorris12•3d ago•0 comments

Situational Awareness Down 67% in July in AI Stock Rout

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/situational-awareness-down-67-in-july-in-ai-stock-rout-cd19...
83•pondsider•1h ago•82 comments

The Religion of Speed

https://graybeard.ing/the-religion-of-speed/
236•MobiusHorizons•15h ago•118 comments

Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/read-this-before-you-buy-that-tv-streaming-stick/
771•speckx•22h ago•481 comments

Ruby Central's Destructive Legacy

https://andre.arko.net/2026/07/30/ruby-centrals-destructive-legacy/
56•4d66ba06•3h ago•31 comments

Where USB Memory Sticks are Born (2013)

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2013/where-usb-memory-sticks-are-born/
81•jacquesm•3d ago•5 comments

Simulating TCP loss and congestion in browser using Go/WASM

https://ccsim.fly.dev
55•dilyevsky•2d ago•1 comments

GCC steering committee announces AI policy

https://lwn.net/Articles/1086041/
328•arto•1d ago•377 comments

The Economic Benefit of Refactoring

https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/refactoring-economic-benefit.html
267•javaeeeee•1d ago•115 comments

Memo-1: A 6502 computer built from scratch, using a Minitel as its terminal

https://github.com/MemoireMorte/Memo-1
95•sciences44•3d ago•13 comments

Bad Apple but It's Traceroute

https://jssfr.de/2026-07-27-bad-apple-but-traceroute.html
147•jssfr•3d ago•48 comments