Math long resisted a digital disruption. AI is poised to change that

Modern formalization, supercharged by AI, could radically change the way people do mathematics

An animated GIF of a math equation.

Illustration by Melvin Galapon

Mathematician Kevin Buzzard of Imperial College London is training computers how to prove one of the most famous problems in math history: Fermat’s last theorem.

Resolving the problem isn’t the point. There’s already an accepted proof that was finalized in 1998. That work is a tortuous maze of mathematics that fills about 130 pages over two papers.