Open AI claims Their new model of reasoning has produced an original mathematical proof that refutes a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s not the first time OpenAI has made such a bold claim. seven months agothe AI giant former vice president Kevil Weil posted in X: “GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdős problems and made progress on another 11.”
It turns out that GPT-5 didn’t actually solve those problems; it simply found existing solutions that already existed in the literature.
Mockery from rivals such as Yann LeCun and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis followed, and Weil quickly retired his position prematurely. Today, at least, it appears that OpenAI didn’t make the same mistake twice. Along with the announcement, OpenAI published colleague’s comments in support of the refutation of mathematicians such as Noga Alon, Melanie Wood and Thomas Bloom, who maintain the Erdos Problems websiteand previously called Weil’s publication “a dramatic misrepresentation.”
“For almost 80 years, mathematicians believed that the best possible solutions roughly resembled square grids.” OpenAI published in X. “An OpenAI model has disproved that belief and discovered a whole new family of constructs that works better.”
The company said this marks “the first time AI has autonomously solved an important open problem central to a field of mathematics.” The proof, according to OpenAI, came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, not from a system designed specifically to solve mathematical problems or even this particular problem.
OpenAI says this is important because it means AI systems are now better able to hold together long, difficult chains of reasoning and connect ideas across fields in ways that researchers may not have explored before. This has implications for biology, physics, engineering and medicine.
“AI is helping us more fully explore the cathedral of mathematics we have built over the centuries,” Bloom said in a statement. “What other unseen wonders are waiting in the wings?”
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