用AI自动压缩复杂数学证明,让长证明变短易懂。
ProofOptimizer: Training Language Models to Simplify Proofs without Human Demonstrations
- 通过强化学习训练模型,无需人工标注即可简化形式化证明。
- 在多个基准上将证明长度缩短49%至87%,提升验证效率。
- 适合研究自动化证明与形式化数学的学者使用。
过去一年,神经定理证明已取得显著进展,达到国际数学奥林匹克金牌水平,生成的正式证明可达数千行。尽管这些证明可通过Lean等形式系统机械验证,但过长的篇幅使其难以被人理解,限制了其在数学洞察中的应用。因此,证明简化成为关键瓶颈。然而,该任务的训练数据稀缺,现有方法主要依赖现成大模型的代理框架,难以处理强化学习训练出的长证明。我们提出ProofOptimizer,首个无需额外人类监督即可简化Lean证明的语言模型。它通过专家迭代和强化学习训练,利用Lean验证简化结果并提供反馈信号。推理时,它在迭代式压缩流程中逐步缩短证明。实验表明,ProofOptimizer显著压缩了顶尖强化学习证明器生成的证明:在miniF2F上减少87%,PutnamBench上减少57%,Seed-Prover的IMO 2025证明减少49%。简化后的证明不仅更紧凑,且在Lean中验证更快,作为训练数据用于监督微调时还能进一步提升下游证明器性能。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Neural theorem proving has advanced rapidly in the past year, reaching IMO gold-medalist capabilities and producing formal proofs that span thousands of lines. Although such proofs are mechanically verified by formal systems like Lean, their excessive length renders them difficult for humans to comprehend and limits their usefulness for mathematical insight. Proof simplification is therefore a critical bottleneck. Yet, training data for this task is scarce, and existing methods -- mainly agentic scaffolding with off-the-shelf LLMs -- struggle with the extremely long proofs generated by RL-trained provers. We introduce ProofOptimizer, the first language model trained to simplify Lean proofs without requiring additional human supervision. ProofOptimizer is trained via expert iteration and reinforcement learning, using Lean to verify simplifications and provide training signal. At inference time, it operates within an iterative proof-shortening workflow, progressively reducing proof length. Experiments show that ProofOptimizer substantially compresses proofs generated by state-of-the-art RL-trained provers on standard benchmarks, reducing proof length by 87% on miniF2F, 57% on PutnamBench, and 49% on Seed-Prover's IMO 2025 proofs. Beyond conciseness, the simplified proofs check faster in Lean and further improve downstream prover performance when reused as training data for supervised finetuning.
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