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My interpretation is that Claude did what Knuth considers to be the "solution". Doing the remaining work and polishing up the proof are not necessary to have a
by bachmeier 7mo ago
My interpretation is that Claude did what Knuth considers to be the "solution". Doing the remaining work and polishing up the proof are not necessary to have a solution from this perspective.
- OneManyNone 7mo agoClaude did not find a proof, though. It found an algorithm which Knuth then proved was correct.
- versteegen 7mo agoAFAICT, Claude was not asked to prove its algorithm works for all odd n, but was instead told to move on to even n.
- CobrastanJorji 7mo agoYes, and his point is that finding that algorithm was, to Knuth, the interesting part. Getting from that to a proof was the boring bit.
- NewsaHackO 7mo agoYeah, and I'm not sure what the other guy's argument is. It's Knuth, the primary researcher, who is giving the praise here. I don't see a possible motivation he would have to falsely give accolades to a AI for a problem he presented, then cleaned up to solve.
- OneManyNone 7mo agoThat’s fair. Clearly Knuth himself thought it was impressive, that’s a strong signal.
- iterance 7mo agoThe insight is the point of research. Proof isn't the desired product of research, it's simply an apparatus that exists for the purpose of verifying and demonstrating correctness of insight.