Anthropic's Claude Refutes the Exponential Time Hypothesis, With a Lean Proof (GitHub Repo)

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Summary

Anthropic 发布 formal-math GitHub 仓库,收录机器验证的 Lean 4 形式化证明,其中 Claude 生成的证明在 Lean 中形式化了一个计数 k-CNF 满足赋值的算法,从而推翻指数时间假设(ETH),并包含 Riemann zeta 零点与 3SUM/APSP 等结果的形式化。

Anthropic says an internal research Claude model found, with no human input, a deterministic algorithm that counts the satisfying assignments of 3-SAT formulas in 2^O(n log log n/√log n) time, which would make 3-SAT subexponential and refute ETH. This repository holds the paper and a Lean 4 formalization written by AI models that builds in about 8 minutes, though Anthropic notes no machine checks that the Lean statement matches the paper and the result says nothing about practical SAT solving. It landed hours after OpenAI's own ETH refutation.
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Cached at: 10/29/26, 01:24 AM

anthropics/formal-math

Source: https://github.com/anthropics/formal-math

formal-math

Machine-checked Lean 4 formalizations published by Anthropic. Each subdirectory is a self-contained Lake project with its own toolchain pin, README and build instructions; build from inside the subdirectory. Projects follow the layout of the Palomar submission template (Challenge.lean / Solution.lean / comparator.json / formalization.yaml at the project root) and are submitted to Palomar with the subdirectory as the selected project; the licence file Palomar reads is this repository’s root LICENSE.

ProjectStatementLean / Mathlib
zeta23/More than two thirds of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function are simple and on the critical line (Alpöge–Furman, arXiv:2608.13637)leanprover/lean4:v4.33.0-rc2 / Mathlib v4.33.0-rc2
3sum-apsp/Programs of a word RAM solve 3SUM in O(n^1.9992) steps and the (min,+)-product and APSP in O(n^2.99942) steps, on integers of polynomial size; also bounds for Exact Triangle and Zero-Weight k-Clique, and further results of the paper, item by item (Alman–Vassilevska Williams, arXiv:2610.06783)leanprover/lean4:v4.33.1 / Mathlib v4.33.1
eth/One deterministic Turing machine counts the satisfying assignments of every k-CNF with m ≥ 2 clauses on n ≥ 4 variables, each of which occurs, in 2^O(min{k^2 n log log n/√log n, km/√log m}) steps, which refutes the Exponential Time Hypothesis (Claude, paper in the folder)leanprover/lean4:v4.33.1 / Mathlib v4.33.1

CI

Pull requests and pushes to main run .github/workflows/lean-projects.yml on each project folder whose files changed, and only on those; a change confined to CI configuration or documentation (.github/, this README, …) verifies nothing, and a full run of every project is started manually from the Actions tab (workflow_dispatch, projects = all). The verify job runs on the runner label in the repository/organization variable LEAN_CI_RUNNER when it is set (e.g. a GitHub larger runner such as ubuntu-latest-16-cores), otherwise on ubuntu-latest. Pull-request runs reuse the project’s previous Lake build for the same toolchain and manifest (only changed modules are rebuilt); merges to main and manual runs build from scratch. A project passes when lake build succeeds on its pinned toolchain with no sorry outside the trusted comparator statement files (Challenge.lean, Challenge/<Topic>.lean), and when the Palomar registry’s acceptance check — leanprover/comparator with a toolchain-matched lean4export, the independent nanoda kernel and the landrun sandbox, at the registry’s tool pins — prints Your solution is okay! for every comparator configuration the project declares (.github/scripts/comparator-check.sh; run it locally with cd <project> && bash ../.github/scripts/comparator-check.sh).

To add a project: create a top-level directory with lakefile.toml (or lakefile.lean), lean-toolchain, lake-manifest.json, a Mathlib-only Challenge module stating the headline theorems, a Solution module proving them from the library, and at least one comparator configuration (comparator.json next to the lakefile, or comparator/config*.json); add a row to the table above.

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE. Individual projects may carry additional NOTICE files.

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