A subset ${\mathcal{X}}$ of a C*-algebra ${\mathcal{A}}$ is called irredundant if no $A\in {\mathcal{X}}$ belongs to the C*-subalgebra of ${\mathcal{A}}$ generated by ${\mathcal{X}}\setminus \{A\}$. Separable C*-algebras cannot have uncountable irredundant sets and all members of many classes of nonseparable C*-algebras, e.g., infinite dimensional von Neumann algebras have irredundant sets of cardinality continuum.

There exists a considerable literature showing that the question whether every AF commutative nonseparable C*-algebra has an uncountable irredundant set is sensitive to additional set-theoretic axioms, and we investigate here the noncommutative case.

Assuming $\diamondsuit$ (an additional axiom stronger than the continuum hypothesis), we prove that there is an AF C*-subalgebra of ${\mathcal{B}}(\ell _{2})$ of density $2^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{1}$ with no nonseparable commutative C*-subalgebra and with no uncountable irredundant set. On the other hand we also prove that it is consistent that every discrete collection of operators in ${\mathcal{B}}(\ell _{2})$ of cardinality continuum contains an irredundant subcollection of cardinality continuum.

Other partial results and more open problems are presented.