AI models are solving long-open math problems
The article argues that cheap automated verifiers let models test many unlikely hints quickly.
Research#02
1946
Year Erdős's unit distance conjecture opened
Image: Latent Space
1946Year Erdős's unit distance conjecture opened
The short version
- In May, an internal OpenAI model found a counterexample to Erdős's unit distance conjecture, which had been open since 1946.
- A month later, OpenAI published a proof of the Cycle Double Cover problem, and by July it had solutions to ten more open problems.
- OpenAI also published a proof of Navier Stokes in September.
- Anthropic published a formalization of Fermat's Last Theorem and advanced bounds on the Riemann hypothesis.
Why it matters
The article says AI changes the search for proofs. A model can test an ordinary or implausible hint in minutes with an automated verifier, so it can trade time for compute. For developers, the verifier and a record of failed attempts used as negative hints are the key parts of the system.
“The models are suddenly good at math.”