• Home
  • Uncategorized
  • Intentmaking and Sensemaking: Human Interaction with AI-Guided Mathematical Discovery

arXiv:2605.05921v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Artificial intelligence offers powerful new tools for scientific discovery, but the interaction paradigms required to effectively harness these systems remain underexplored. In this paper, we present findings from a formative user study with 11 expert mathematicians who used AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent, to tackle advanced problems in their fields of expertise. We identify and characterize a distinct workflow we term intentmaking, the iterative process of discovering, defining, and refining one’s experimental goals through active system interaction. We frame this as a natural extension to sensemaking, the cognitive process of building an understanding of complex or novel data. We suggest that users enter a cycle of intentmaking (defining and updating their experiment) and sensemaking (interpreting the results) which repeats many times during the course of an investigation. Our documentation of these themes suggests an approach to designing AI tools for scientific discovery that goes beyond the existing question/answer model of many current systems, treating them as collaborative instruments rather than opaque black-box assistants.

Subscribe for Updates

Copyright 2025 dijee Intelligence Ltd.   dijee Intelligence Ltd. is a private limited company registered in England and Wales at Media House, Sopers Road, Cuffley, Hertfordshire, EN6 4RY, UK registration number 16808844