In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win

Last March, Iowa State University mathematicians Leslie Hogben and Carolyn Reinhart received a welcome surprise. Adam Wagner, a postdoctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University, emailed to let them know he'd answered a question they'd published the week before -- though not by any of the usual math or brute-force computing techniques. Instead, he used a game-playing machine. "I was very happy to have the question answered. I was excited that Adam had done it with AI," said Hogben. Hogben and Reinhart's problem was one of four that Wagner solved using artificial intelligence.