Discussion

• @geogristle @geogristle on x

  I should say before I get mobbed on that I don't think Tao meant it that way or intended to demoralize. There are just too few voices of real encouragement in the world so it's worth trying to do a little better in the miniscule ways that I can

• @geogristle @geogristle on x

  This is so funny because it directly contradicts Tao's “when a problem is posed everyone tries their repertoire of techniques on it, then if it doesn't crack we set it aside and wait till someone comes up with a new technique, at which point we try that trick on many old problems

• @_space_punk_ @_space_punk_ on x

  @QiaochuYuan Clearly true with other kinds of knowledge (although not if one sees all reality as boiling down to math anyways of course)- the devas and the kinds of knowledge they possess, the humans having a different version of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the angels having a diff…

• @easthallboy @easthallboy on x

  @Ananyo Interesting statement from Tao because that's what a lot of ostensibly smart people would say when a genius solves a proble they could not. And given he is one of the smartest humans on the planet.....

• @briansatur24273 Brian Saturnino on x

  @yoitsyoung I tried re-running his same exact prompt 10x. However, it seems to consistently keep giving up and providing partial results. I wonder if it's some sort of lottery where you have to keep resending until it finally gives in?

• @bertcmiller @bertcmiller on x

  Pretty remarkable to think this problem went unsolved purely because of some strange, collective “block” that prevented humans from approaching it the right way Naturally the next question is: where else might these blocks be?

• @doctormew @doctormew on x

  @Ananyo He attacked it with a statistical model of all of humanities knowledge. The answer was out there but in different locations. Doesn't mean ChatGPT was intelligent. The kid did this using a tool. ChatGPT would have never have done this on its own. That's what people don't

• @tarunchitra Tarun Chitra on x

  The Finite Field Kakeya Conjecture was no fluke ... and maybe the 3d one will also be the same

• @qiaochuyuan @qiaochuyuan on x

  for the record i skimmed the discussion of this erdos problem and i don't think the situation is quite this dramatic, yet, but it's nice to have some fuel for the imagination huh

• @functi0nzer0 Laurence on x

  It's going to be extremely funny in ten years from now when someone using GPT 11.4 or whatever asks for some vibecoded app that vaguely involves the Traveling Salesman Problem and it just bangs out a constructive proof of P ≠ NP as an aside while bitching about React plugins

• @yoitsyoung @yoitsyoung on x

  Sounded so crazy I had to check how he prompted ChatGPT. He only wrote 9 sentences. “Don't use the internet. </problem> </lemma 1> </lemma 2> </lemma 3> REMEMBER: this unconditional argument may require non-trivial, creative and novel elements.” Wow.

• @pmddomingos Pedro Domingos on x

  AI will make many scientific breakthroughs just by having different mental blocks from humans.

• @ananyo Ananyo Bhattacharya on x

  23 years old with no advanced mathematics training solves Erdős problem with ChatGPT Pro. “What's beginning to emerge is that the problem was maybe easier than expected, and it was like there was some kind of mental block.”-Terence Tao https://www.scientificamerican.com/ ...

• @qiaochuyuan @qiaochuyuan on x

  spooky implication that there is potentially some whole universe of “shadow math” that you have to make inhuman mental movements to access so no human have done so yet, that is going to be increasingly revealed by frontier models [image]

• @csxai Alex on x

  @yoitsyoung Yeah, the models will give up quite fast if they “know” based on internet search that a problem is open for Y years. Just make them believe its a test of their ability and there is a result they don't yet know and they are much more capable.

• @yoitsyoung @yoitsyoung on x

  Conversation: https://chatgpt.com/...

• @mathandcobb Alvaro Lozano-Robledo on x

  Or... 23yo uses ALL THE MATH AND COMPUTER SCIENCE currently available, that is, thousands of years of progress, to solve an Erdős problem.

• @crepesupreme @crepesupreme on x

  @Ananyo Buried at the end: Tao saying the problem was ‘maybe easier than expected... like there was some kind of mental block.’ A 23-year-old without a Ph.D. did the trying-weird-things labor. ChatGPT Pro lowered the prior on which approach was worth checking.

• @indif4ent @indif4ent on x

  taos referenced “mental block” is simple: garbage consensus conventions that arent strictly required by plain logic, but are fallaciously treated as such “because thats how we do things.” its “bugmens' math,” nothing mystical or special here

• @hasen_95dx @hasen_95dx on x

  @yoitsyoung Amazing stuff [image]

• @williamtomosed1 William Tomos Edwards on x

  @Ananyo Can't agree with Tao on this. The implication is either: 1) The “outsiders' perspective” truly is valuable in higher maths 2) You can thank ChatGPT Pro, and the human doing the prompting was basically irrelevant. 3) some mixture of both

• @emostaque Emad on x

  Bet this happens with Navier Stokes and it's going to be something not even related to PDEs that solves it

• @laurencebrem Laurence Bremner on x

  @yoitsyoung How much math solved by AI now is just using the right phrasing? Astounding it was as simple as “this unconditional argument may require non-trivial, creative and novel elements”

• @theali_iqbal Ali Iqbal on x

  @yoitsyoung @sama Why not set aside a (relatively) small amount of compute and have GPT 5.5 autonomously and continuously working on thousands of open problems?

• @scottsantens.com Scott Santens on bluesky

  A 23-year-old with no advanced math training just vibe-mathed a 60-year-old Erdos conjecture with one ChatGPT 5.4 Pro prompt.  The AI used a method no mathematician had tried.  The proof has been confirmed by Terence Tao.  Pretty cool news.

• r/artificial r on reddit

  An amateur just solved a 60-year-old math problem—by asking AI

• r/technology r on reddit

  An amateur just solved a 60-year-old math problem—by asking AI

• r/accelerate r on reddit

  An amateur just solved a 60-year-old math problem—by asking AI

• r/skeptic r on reddit

  How smart is AI?

• r/mathematics r on reddit

  Amateur armed with ChatGPT ‘vibe-maths’ a 60-year-old problem