lukeprog comments on Progress on automated mathematical theorem proving? - Less Wrong

14 Post author: JonahSinick 03 July 2013 06:40PM

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Comment author: lukeprog 05 July 2013 02:58:02AM 1 point [-]

I don't think this is what Jonah is talking about. This is just one of thousands of examples of formal verification of safety-critical software.

Comment author: loup-vaillant 05 July 2013 08:52:10PM 2 points [-]

The key part is that some of those formal verification processes involve automated proof generation. This is exactly what Jonah is talking about:

I don't know of any computer programs that have been able to prove theorems outside of the class "very routine and not requiring any ideas," without human assistance (and without being heavily specialized to an individual theorem).

Those who make (semi-)automated proof for a living have a vested interest in making such things as useful as possible. Among other things, this means as automated as possible, and as general as possible. They're not there yet, but they're definitely working on it.