The First Proof team is not convinced by these claims, and they have concerns that the labs cheated by using human mathematicians to complete or correct proof sketches. I hope someone from the team will respond here to these claims.
Lots of hand wringing and mathematicians vs. Go/Chess players etc. comparisons. Apparently not enough mathematicians have "woken up" to their imminent replacement by autonomous "proof agents" that go about the world proving any and all conjectures at astonishing rates!!! etc etc.
that and Ethan Mollick's consistent prophetic pronouncements of techno-rapture. Apparently, no one is paying enough attention! I have seen these kinds of dynamics in religious circles that are "born again."
Which I update, in view of the latest news from the Pentagon: why would these autonomous "proof agents" waste their time proving conjectures that only interest a few dozen people when launching autonomous weapons is more profitable, and arguably more fun?
Looks like some have claimed/are claiming that they solved 6 out of 10 of the problems. I think by next year it will be able to solve anything you want.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
The First Proof team is not convinced by these claims, and they have concerns that the labs cheated by using human mathematicians to complete or correct proof sketches. I hope someone from the team will respond here to these claims.
Specifically, I am hearing about this from "viral blog posts"
https://www.daniellitt.com/blog/2026/2/20/mathematics-in-the-library-of-babel
Lots of hand wringing and mathematicians vs. Go/Chess players etc. comparisons. Apparently not enough mathematicians have "woken up" to their imminent replacement by autonomous "proof agents" that go about the world proving any and all conjectures at astonishing rates!!! etc etc.
that and Ethan Mollick's consistent prophetic pronouncements of techno-rapture. Apparently, no one is paying enough attention! I have seen these kinds of dynamics in religious circles that are "born again."
I wish instead of creating "viral blog posts" those people would post their comments in response to this earlier item: https://siliconreckoner.substack.com/p/pages-missing-from-the-mathematical
Which I update, in view of the latest news from the Pentagon: why would these autonomous "proof agents" waste their time proving conjectures that only interest a few dozen people when launching autonomous weapons is more profitable, and arguably more fun?
Looks like some have claimed/are claiming that they solved 6 out of 10 of the problems. I think by next year it will be able to solve anything you want.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow