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Using AI and computer automation, Technion researchers have developed a ‘conjecture generator’ that creates mathematical conjectures, which are considered to be the starting point for developing mathematical theorems. They have already used it to generate a number of previously unknown formulas. The study, which was published in the journal Nature, was carried out by undergraduates from different faculties under the tutelage of Assistant Professor Ido Kaminer of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion.

Most image-recognition systems are trained using large databases that contain millions of photos of everyday objects, from snakes to shakes to shoes. With repeated exposure, AIs learn to tell one type of object from another. Now researchers in Japan have shown that AIs can start learning to recognize everyday objects by being trained on computer-generated fractals instead.

Computer-aided calculations have played a crucial part in producing the proofs of several high-profile results. And more recently, some mathematicians have made progress towards AI that doesn’t just perform repetitive calculations, but develops its own proofs. Another growing area has been software that can go over a mathematical proof written by humans and check that it is correct.


Algorithm named after mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan suggests interesting formulae, some of which are difficult to prove true.

At the heart of the development of AI appears to be a search for perfection. And it could be just as dangerous to humanity as the one that came from philosophical and pseudoscientific ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries and led to the horrors of colonialism, world war and the Holocaust. Instead of a human ruling “master race”, we could end up with a machine one.