Anthropic AI model formalizes complete machine-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem

The short version

• Anthropic announced that an internal AI model formalized a complete, machine-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in the Lean 4 proof assistant.[Hacker News · Hacker News]
• The formalization completes the final problem on Freek Wiedijk's list of 100 benchmark formalization challenges.[Hacker News]
• The codebase spans over 13.4 million lines generated to be machine-checked rather than read by humans, relying partly on existing open-source projects.[Hacker News · Hacker News]
• Anthropic published the codebase under an Apache 2.0 open-source license as an unmaintained research artifact.[Hacker News]

Key facts

• Anthropic's internal model formalized a full machine-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean 4.[Hacker News · Hacker News]
• The achievement resolves the final entry in Freek Wiedijk's 20-year-old list of 100 formalization challenges.[Hacker News]
• The proof comprises more than 13.4 million lines of code and takes about 20 times longer to compile than Lean's math library.[Hacker News]
• The sources were generated by AI agents to be verified by machine rather than read by humans.[Hacker News]
• Portions of the proof incorporate previous work from Mathlib, flt-regular, and Kevin Buzzard's Imperial College London FLT project.[Hacker News]
• Anthropic released the repository under an Apache 2.0 license as an unmaintained research artifact.[Hacker News]

Sources

Outlet counts describe coverage, not independent confirmation. Reports may share a wire service or original source.

• Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean 4Hacker News
• Fermat's Last Theorem: Anthropic has beaten me to itHacker News