Human agency in initial human-AI proof formalization workflows

Abstract

For centuries, human mathematicians have written proofs to substantiate their mathematical arguments; yet, the ability to automatically verify the validity of proofs has long been a challenge. Advances in AI systems' ability to generate code and engage in increasingly high-level mathematical reasoning promise to transform people's ability to formalize and thereby verify proofs. While many works focus on benchmarking the current frontier, we instead study how people use these tools and apply agency in doing so. We conduct a mixed-methods analysis into the initial impact of AI on people's formalization workflows: what people claim they want, what they see as the barriers to those visions, and how they actually use and adapt AI in practice. A qualitative survey reveals that people's preferences are diverse, but with a general desire for AI assistance in formalization that preserves high-level human control and agency over the proof discovery process. To assess how people actually engage with AI for formalization, we conduct a controlled user study in which participants formalize informal math problems and their proofs, with and without AI, across a range of mathematical problems at varying levels of difficulty and domains. Despite limitations of the tools at the time for autoformalization, participants tended to attain higher formalization accuracy when allowed access to AI tools than when formalizing on their own, with most participants flexibly choosing to use multiple different AI tools. Taken together, our work sheds light on the early stages of AI integration into formalization workflows, involving an intimate interplay of human agency and AI engagement.