The Proof in the Code: How a Truth Machine Is Transforming Math and AI

It began as an obscure bug-checking program at Microsoft Research developed by a lone computer engineer named Leo de Moura.Then an unlikely crew of mathematical misfits caught wind of it and began to adopt it with messianic zeal.Their goal was to create a truth machine that could provide the rarest of all commodities in life: a complete, 100 percent guarantee that something is true.Its name: Lean. As the movement grew and strengthened the program’s capabilities, it drew in two of the world’s most prominent mathematicians: Peter Scholze and Terence Tao.Google DeepMind, Meta AI, and other tech firms started using the program to supercharge computer reasoning.Now it’s remaking the multi-thousand-year history of how mathematicians work, collaborate, and assess truth, while charting a new path in the march toward machine intelligence. In The Proof in the Code, Kevin Hartnett tells the definitive story of the birth and rise of Lean, and how a growing movement is transforming the enterprise o