Discussion

• @wtgowers @wtgowers on x

  AI has now solved a major open problem — one of the best known Erdos problems called the unit distance problem, one of Erdos's favourite questions and one that many mathematicians had tried. https://openai.com/...

• @openai @openai on x

  This result points to something larger: AI systems are becoming capable of holding together long, difficult chains of reasoning, connecting ideas across distant fields, and surfacing paths researchers may not have explored. We believe those same abilities will soon accelerate

• @deryatr_ Derya Unutmaz on x

  This is a major turning point or a milestone in the impact of AI on solving math problems! The breakthrough was through an internal OpenAI model, which is mind-blowing 🤯. That's all for now and be ready for arrival to the next checkpoint☺️

• @tenobrus @tenobrus on x

  this should feel surprising. in some sense it's objectively very big news. but this was so clearly the trajectory we were on that it actually just feels like another normal day. life on the METR trendline.

• @openai @openai on x

  Today, we share a breakthrough on the planar unit distance problem, a famous open question first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. For nearly 80 years, mathematicians believed the best possible solutions looked roughly like square grids. An OpenAI model has now disproved that [video]

• @snewmanpv Steve Newman on x

  I think we are in the process of discovering that humans are bad at mathematics. A gibbon would scoff at an Olympic climber; the human body is not optimized for climbing. We're getting mounting evidence that our brain may be far from optimal for advanced math. No disrespect to

• @basedjensen @basedjensen on x

  Don't worry guys it's fancy auto complete

• @wtgowers @wtgowers on x

  If you are a mathematician, then you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.

• @poshenloh Po-Shen Loh on x

  Whoa. This breakthrough is going to fundamentally affect the structure of how universities select and retain professors. And more generally the structure of work and creativity. AI has managed to discover a significant result in research mathematics in a one-shot query (!!!),

• @willdepue Will Depue on x

  bro it isn't generally intelligent bro its only read every book and paper ever written and just making connections between them bro. its only thinking for twenty hours bro it's just brute force thinking bro. its only solving erdos problems bro it could never be an accountant bro

• @polynoamial Noam Brown on x

  Today, we're sharing that a general-purpose internal @openai model achieved a breakthrough on one of the best-known combinatorial geometry problems. Less than 1 year ago frontier AI models were at IMO gold-level performance. I expect this pace of progress to continue.

• @alexwei_ Alexander Wei on x

  1/ Ten months ago, I was ecstatic that AI could win IMO gold. Today, that excitement feels quaint: an internal @OpenAI model has refuted Erdos's unit distance conjecture—a research result that one could recommend “acceptance without any hesitation” to the Annals of Mathematics.

• @emollick Ethan Mollick on x

  June 2024: The latest general-purpose LLMs could not count the r's in strawberry. July 2025: The latest general-purpose LLMs get gold in the International Math Olympiad. May 2026: The latest general-purpose LLM solve one of the “best-known questions in combinatorial geometry” [im…

• @captgouda24 Nicholas Decker on x

  Math grad student friend comments on the recent Erdős proof. [image]

• @sama Sam Altman on x

  a general-purpose model solved a major open problem in mathematics. we'll be saying this a lot over the coming years, but this is a kinda big milestone. i'm very excited for AI to greatly extend our understanding of the world, but still, i have complicated feelings today.

• @francoisfleuret François Fleuret on x

  AIs are gaining momentum, and “human level” is an inexistent milestone.

• @r_thaler Richard H Thaler on x

  This extraordinary achievement raises an obvious question: what is the role of humans who prove things for a living? In economics, can theorists just say, proof provided by AI? @alexolegimas @BenSManning

• @chrszegedy Christian Szegedy on x

  Whatever the definition of “superhuman AI mathematician” is, I think my original prediction of June 2026 is not too far off the mark.

• @ericjang11 Eric Jang on x

  [x] automated math machine [ ] proof / disproof of navier stokes conjecture [ ] recursive self improver Prediction: all this and more will be accomplished by EOY 2026

• @emostaque Emad on x

  Once AI starts making solving open problems in novel ways it won't stop. We are entering the final stage of human solutions to open problems like this. Feels weird, doesn't it?

• @openai @openai on x

  The proof came from a general-purpose reasoning model, not a system built specifically to solve math problems or this problem in particular, and represents an important milestone for the math and AI communities. https://openai.com/...

• @noahpinion Noah Smith on x

  AI can solve difficult, important problems in mathematics that human beings haven't been able to solve.

• @deanwball Dean W. Ball on x

  Smile: a renaissance is upon us.

• @willdepue Will Depue on x

  it's kind of fucking ridiculous (and quite frightening) we're this far — the models are solving long standing problems in discrete geometry — yet the models do this still by thinking to themselves in plain english? that is easily interpretable? what the hell man [image]

• @gdb Greg Brockman on x

  An OpenAI model has achieved a major breakthrough in mathematics, by disproving a central conjecture in discrete geometry that was first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. This is the first time AI has autonomously solved a prominent open problem central to a field of mathematics.

• @joshgans Joshua Gans on x

  Journals have an explicit policy of not publishing AI authored work. So what will that mean here? They can't stop AI contributing to knowledge. Can they stop it being cited?

• Olga Holtz Olga Holtz on linkedin

  Today's OpenAI announcement on the planar unit distance problem should end one debate and start a more interesting one. …

• Rishikesh Gajjala Rishikesh Gajjala on linkedin

  OpenAI has just announced that its internal model has solved a problem many Fields Medalists and Abel Prize laureates have tried but failed to crack for decades! …

• @geomblog Suresh Venkatasubramanian on bluesky

  OpenAI just announced that ChatGPT has disproved a conjecture about one of Erdos's most famous problems: the unit distance problem. openai.com/index/model-...  This problem is personal to me: I spent time during my Ph.D mulling over it, and it hooked me into computational geometr…

• @gro-tsen @gro-tsen on bluesky

  🔽 Announcement is at openai.com/index/model-... — with links to the annotated proof and comments by various experts.  —  Interestingly, these (OpenAI-chosen) experts seem to mostly agree the main reason humans were stuck on the problem is they were trying to prove it rather find …

• @timkellogg.me Tim Kellogg on bluesky

  the wild thing is that, even today, you can hire AI consultants who will come in and tell you that LLMs can't do math [embedded post]

• @wtgowers Timothy Gowers on bluesky

  OpenAI's claim that this is a central conjecture in discrete geometry is not an exaggeration.  This will I think be looked back on as the first time that AI solved a major mathematics problem (defined as a problem that all experts in some subfield had thought about).  —  openai.c…

• r/slatestarcodex r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry - the planar unit distance problem.

• r/ArtificialInteligence r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/BetterOffline r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/antiai r on reddit

  What do you think of this?

• r/aiwars r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/MachineLearning r on reddit

  OpenAI claims a general-purpose reasoning model found a counterexample to Erdos's unit-distance bound [D]

• r/mathematics r on reddit

  OpenAI model produces a counterexample to Erdős's conjectured unit-distance bound

• r/artificial r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/singularity r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/technology r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/accelerate r on reddit

  Another win for the parrots: An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/OpenAI r on reddit

  An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

• r/mlscaling r on reddit

  “An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry” (log scaling of inner-monologue compute in probability solving Erdős's planar unit distance problem)