GoKawiil
Tech News
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the Cheeky Pint podcast that he sympathizes with mathematicians overwhelmed by the company's flood of AI-generated math results, but that OpenAI will keep publishing them. He argued the public's right to scientific knowledge outweighs the disruption caused, while admitting OpenAI needs to improve how it communicates its findings.
OpenAI reportedly published hundreds of mathematical proofs over recent months covering number theory, theoretical computer science and logic, some addressing problems unsolved for decades or centuries. Fields Medalist Hugo Duminil-Copin said the work left him crying and feeling his field had been 'annihilated,' while Cornell's Steven Strogatz described mathematicians using phrases like 'strip-mining our subject' to capture their shock.
OpenAI reportedly plans to release on GitHub hundreds of mathematical solutions generated by an internal model it began training in August, including a claimed resolution of the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem. Mathematicians who attended an August meeting with OpenAI say they asked the company to publish such findings as peer-reviewable papers rather than a bulk dump, a request they say was ignored. OpenAI spokesperson Lindsay McCallum says the company is consulting an advisory group at the Institute for Advanced Study and has not set a release date.
A mathematician writing in a new essay says artificial intelligence systems are beginning to crack mathematical problems that have stumped human researchers for decades, something the author says they never expected to witness. The author argues this marks a turning point where the cultural image of mathematicians as singular problem-solving 'heroes' is fading as AI takes on that role.
In a guest blog post, mathematician Amit Sahai says AI systems he has worked with are producing genuinely new mathematical ideas, not just fast calculations or restating known arguments. He argues this will make many researchers feel unable to keep pace, echoing struggles once faced by undergraduates who abandoned math research because top peers grasped concepts faster than they could.
OpenAI announced a nine-member Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AGMAI), made up of prominent mathematicians from institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, several holding Fields Medals or MacArthur grants. The group will be hosted by Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and is meant to advise OpenAI and other AI companies on how they present and release mathematical results, operating independently and unpaid, with the ability to comment publicly and issue unsolicited advice.
OpenAI has pulled its financial backing of Caltech's Mathathon competition following tensions with mathematicians. Organizers told Gizmodo they don't expect the withdrawal to substantially disrupt the event.
A newly minted PhD in Arithmetic Geometry from the University of Florida writes candidly about choosing not to pursue an academic mathematics career, describing years of quiet, unhurried study under an advisor who never pushed toward the professor track. The essay explores the gap between the intense passion typical of career mathematicians and the author's own more ambivalent relationship with the field.