In September 2026, Anthropic announced that Claude had produced the first complete computer-checked formalization of Fermat's Last Theorem, one of the most famous results in mathematics. Nature described the achievement as a milestone for mathematics. Nature

Fermat's Last Theorem dates back to around 1637 and states that no positive integers a, b and c satisfy aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for n greater than 2. The problem challenged mathematicians for more than 350 years before Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor completed its proof in the 1990s. Nature

Importantly, AI did not discover or newly solve Fermat's Last Theorem. Instead, Claude translated the existing body of mathematical reasoning into a formal language that the Lean proof assistant could check step by step.

Working largely autonomously with multiple AI agents, Claude completed the task in just 11 days, generating approximately 13 million lines of Lean code and using around 29,500 intermediate theorems in the final proof. Nature

Comment from GAME-F

Generative AI is often associated with writing text, answering questions, or creating images. This achievement demonstrates another emerging role: AI as a research tool capable of organizing human knowledge and systematically verifying complex reasoning.

It is important to emphasize that AI did not “discover” or “solve” Fermat's Last Theorem for the first time. Instead, it built on mathematical knowledge developed by humans and transformed an enormously complex proof into a form that could be checked by a computer.

This development also raises an important question for children's education: What should children learn when AI can increasingly provide answers? Memorizing answers alone may become less important than understanding why an answer is correct, checking AI-generated results, and exploring alternative approaches.

In the age of AI, education may therefore need to cultivate not only the ability to ask AI for answers, but also the ability to verify those answers.

References

Anthropic — Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem

Nature — Anthropic AI ‘formalizes’ proof of Fermat’s last theorem — a milestone for mathematics