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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Claim. The manuscript The eventual value of h4h_4, and improved bounds for the Choi--Erdős--Szemerédi pairwise-sums problem (Erdős #866), Draft v5, frozen on 8 July 2026, released with a Lean development in the repository demonstrandum-research/artifacts and announced in a thread comment of the same day. It uses van Doorn's conventions for the gk(N)g_k(N) of Problem 866: the bib_i are distinct integers, at most one of them non-positive, and hkh_k is the variant with positive bib_i. Its claims, in the corpus's words:

  • Theorem 1.4: g5(N)≤3,519,219g_5(N)\le3{,}519{,}219 for all NN. The Lean declaration g5upper_star_charter states gFun 5 n < 3519220, against van Doorn's own definitions from that formalization, which the development carries unchanged. The proof replaces van Doorn's Lemma 7 by a variant with a forbidden set (the manuscript's Lemma 7.1), which removes a factor 22 per step of the recursion of Choi, Erdős and Szemerédi.
  • Theorems 1.1 to 1.3, for the positive variant: h4(n)=4h_4(n)=4 for all n≥331,777n\ge331{,}777, and 4≤h4(n)≤10004\le h_4(n)\le1000 for all n≥3n\ge3.
  • Theorem 1.5: h5(n)≥#{Fibonacci numbers≤n}+1h_5(n)\ge\#\{\text{Fibonacci numbers}\le n\}+1, improving the bound log⁡2n\log_2n.
  • Theorem 1.7: gk(n)<2n1−22−kg_k(n)<2n^{1-2^{2-k}} for k≥4k\ge4 and n≥k4⋅24k+27n\ge k^4\cdot2^{4k+27}, at the manuscript's paper grade with no Lean proof.
  • Exact values computed with SAT solvers and checked certificates: g5(n)=5g_5(n)=5 for 5≤n≤145\le n\le14 and g5(n)=4g_5(n)=4 for 15≤n≤2315\le n\le23, with further values of h4h_4, h5h_5 and g4g_4 on initial segments.

The manuscript prints no author line. The repository's README describes the work as produced by an AI pipeline directed and audited by John Erlbacher, who committed the release and posted the thread comment. The manuscript's §12 states that Claude (Anthropic) agents generated the proofs, certificates, code and Lean formalizations; that GPT-5.5 (OpenAI, via Codex) acted as an adversarial referee; that the Lean development builds on van Doorn's formalization by Aristotle (Harmonic); and that the human role was program direction and final review. The release reports its Lean declarations as free of sorry with only the standard axioms; the corpus has not built the development, so it gives no formalized evidence. The thread comment rounds the g5g_5 constant to 3.6⋅1063.6\cdot10^6.

Submission note. Posted to the site's forum by John Erlbacher on 8 July 2026:

Using AI we have been able to improve various bounds that Wouter proved in his recent paper. For example, we can show that the equality h4(n)=4h_4(n) = 4 holds for all large enough nn, and lower the bound g5(n)≤1.2⋅108g_5(n) \le 1.2 \cdot 10^8 down to g5(n)≤3.6⋅106g_5(n) \le 3.6 \cdot 10^6. These bounds have already been formally verified and the Lean files can be found here. We are still working on improving these results further and, in particular, aim to show that $h_4(n) = 4$ holds for all n≥6n \ge 6. We hope to be able to share a human-written paper in the not too distant future.

Covers. The bound g5(N)≤3,519,219g_5(N)\le3{,}519{,}219 for all NN, so that g5g_5 is bounded by the release's own proof, with a constant about 3232 times smaller than that of van Doorn's Theorem 8. Not covered: the value of g5g_5 (the computed values stop at N=23N=23, and the manuscript's §10 route toward g5=4g_5=4 is not claimed as a theorem); h4h_4 and h5h_5, which concern the positive variant; the constants of Theorem 1.7 for general kk; and every other kk.

Standing. The release is unrefereed, no reviewer independent of the claimant has endorsed it, the site's commentary does not record it, and its Lean development has not been built here. The claim stays claimed.

Depends on. van Doorn's claim: the proof reuses lemmas of van Doorn's formalization and a variant of its Lemma 7.