Terence Tao on Nostr: It is therefore disturbing to see the recent trend of proofs being abandoned at an ...

It is therefore disturbing to see the recent trend of proofs being abandoned at an intermediate stage of their developmental process, for instance by an individual or company using AI tools to first generate and then verify a proof, but then showing no inclination to contribute any further to its future development and maturation, for instance by giving talks about the results, or going through the peer review process to publish them. In some cases, other mathematicians have volunteered to take over these duties to ensure that the proof does end up being a meaningful contribution to the literature; but this hardly speaks well of the original "parents" of such a proof.

When it comes to actual parenthood, there is a very strong cultural norm that the parents of a child are responsible for raising that child to full adulthood. In this new era of proof abundance, I propose that the analogous norm for proofs, which held in practice in the past, be made explicit: any author seeking to claim credit for generating a proof should commit to making their best efforts to develop that proof all the way to at least the publication stage. (This includes the prior exposition stage, which involves things like giving talks about the result.) (2/2)