> In addition to resolving the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem , this model has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics.
Rumor was they were sitting on the solution to the Hodge conjecture. I wonder if thats one of these.
> The group will advise on the review and communication of emerging results.
With hundreds of results, and the seeming exponential vertical from earlier in summer (10 major results from Astra, now hundreds...) I do wonder how exactly such a group decides to disseminate results. If it will instantly bottleneck. I mean I checked their site and it seems to be a google form asking for opinions.
> Importantly, the group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics.
Spicy. I think the super intelligence benchmark for me is P vs NP. That one I know is proper hard and feel it in my bones.
In related notes I watched a panel of mathematicians discuss AI recently on YouTubes. Specifically the hlf26 one. [0]. I also watched Terrence Taos recent one on SAIR [1]. In addition to a few others like Tom Rocks and Martin Hairer [2]. Whats abundantly clear is that no one has any answers to what this means for the future of mathematics. They all waffle about what anyone is going to be doing in a few years.
[0] https://youtu.be/H7_d_sgui6o
I think someone at OpenAI (Brockman?) claimed they had "made substantial progress on it", but there is a mathematician on Twitter offering a $25,000 bet, with no takers, that they have not solved it, and that the "substantial progress" they have probably made would still leave them a lot further from a solution than they imagine.
I also see someone else on Twitter claiming to have used AI to understand what the Hodge conjecture is. :)
I really wish OpenAI would fire their PR department (incl. mathematicians), and concentrate on trying to build AGI, or RSI, or generate tons of money, or whatever they are trying to do.
Edit: Apparently not Brockman - some unknown leaker saying there was progress or an expected result soon
OpenAI spent $15 mil working on Navier Stokes.
So you're saying OpenAI not taking a $25k bet is proof of something?
The next few years are gonna be very rough for the human exceptionalism crowd.
Nobody else is getting that. When/If the severe impacts on labor materialize, workers won't get an advisory board. They will just get fired, and the companies will celebrate it as efficiency wins.
I think it's time to get very very real about regulation/taxation. Token/Compute sales tax that gets redistributed as UBI?
Workers will get many boards for sure, you are underestimating unions and protests, it just won't be accepted that there isn't any job for people. The change will be diluted, to try to make economy absorb it.
What a seriously cool archaic word.
Importantly, the group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics.They can solve whatever problems they like, and they can use those findings internally however they like. I think the advice is on how to disclose the findings to the public without as much uproar as our previous debacle.
Importantly, our board will not be responsible for advising us on anything.This alone feels like a horrible new paradigm
That seems so empty. I also operate independently from them and have the freedom to tell them things they haven't requested and comment on their impact and do so publicly. But I doesn't have any impact on OpenAI. If they're trying to say how this will actually have any impact on anything at all, they're doing a shit job.
> ...
> Timothy Gowers (Collège de France, Cambridge)
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/why-i-didnt-sign-the...
Well perhaps we spent a bit too much time discussing the argument and neglected the incentives.
"Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds." -- from A Mathematician's Apology (1940)
No wonder the scornful are upset with AI.
> Following an investigation, we have confirmed that Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the two months preceding this announcement and paper on September 8, 2026, could not have influenced the system in any way, including through training.
And clearly, if they really have solved 100s of other open problems since then, it is only more reason to believe that statement.
Lol, why care about the opinion of a bunch of people who just became obsolete?
> "a scenario in which a large automated proof is achieved but there would be no practical means of getting any understanding of what it means"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46284897#46286785
That is precisely the concern of mathematicians (getting proof without getting the knowledge to humanity):
> But solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight. Forgetting this in the world of AI may turn the tool against the primary goal. Indeed, the mass production at faster and faster pace of "true/false" statements could destroy fertile ground instead of breathing life into new ideas.
I predict it's only going to get worse. So far, in software, all AI companies push for results that you don't necessarily need to understand (don't look at the code). I don't see any reason why they would change that posture for math.
"Your advice for making AI-obtained proof are sensible, but AI has progressed too much and I'm afraid you're obsolete and all math is now a compiler target and not an actual craft", is what I predict based on the exact same thing happening to software recently.
Wrong. Mathematics is not a science at all.
> This has led to internal discussions on the best way to inform the community of the rapid progress to prepare and adapt the field.
I'm also getting real tired of these Silicon Valley and VC bros telling people how to live their lives and how things should be. No, you don't get to tell other people how to operate. Who gave these people this authority? No one. It's confusing, yet not surprising, as to why they think they have this authority.
More like these are the people who didn't refuse
Kinda like people that don't vote because the system doesn't work anyway, then complains when it gets worse.
I wasn't convinced until the mathematics community started responding, openly, with severe distress.
What will be next?
The list is so long I couldn't even begin to describe
If you do know, let me know and I'll lead a round for your VC fund. I for one would never have predicted that abstract topology would lead to nuclear weapons within a few generations.
Well, I do suppose the probability of that is non-zero... ;-)
OpenAI don't seem to have much direction. First they seemed to be concentrating on consumer with ChatGPT, while also pursuing things like image and video generation, about to get into porn (sex-chat), then they suddenly woke up to Anthropic owning the much more lucrative business/API and coding markets and dropped those distractions to compete with Anthropic instead. The whole Navier-Stokes PR debacle was also due to focusing on Anthropic (who they had heard rumor had solved it), maybe also in part jealous of DeepMind's positive AI-for-science press.
So, is this (poorly conceived) PR a rational attempt to boost investment, or more of a case of paying too much attention to the competition?
I can see Altman sitting on 100 less famous math results waiting for the best PR opportunity to release them, but hard to see him sitting on this, risking being scooped by a competitor.
It this had happened and been shared with mathematicians, there would be leaks.
Of course, large parts of science are also economically useless. Like analyzing the storms on Jupiter, or finding out what type of organism the extinct Prototaxites was.
It's done because humans find it intrinsically interesting.
> What a stupid, anti-intellectualism take.
It's the other way round. What he said is true: Most research mathematics is useless. Denying this truth is stupid and anti-intellectual.
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/280530/can-you-prov...
2. It is questionable whether these examples couldn't also have been invented by applied mathematicians as the practical need for them arose. Just like Newton came up with calculus to solve problems in science rather than as a pure math exercise.
3. Even if the previous point doesn't always apply and some pure mathematics turns out to be genuinely useful without being realistically inventable by applied mathematicians: that doesn't mean this happens more than very rarely such that the overall expected economic value of spending money on pure math research is positive.
Not knowing that difference strikes me as much more <I'm not gonna repeat what you wrote>.
I agree with GP most Math is human slop. But to Math's favor, that slop is needed as once in a blue moon a great breakthrough comes off it. The slop is necessary groundwork.
The slop has been automated now, so AI will drive most Math research going forward.
Adapt or cope.
Not sure what you're trying to say. Any time someone wants to actually make a system and not a pile of spaghetti or inactionable philosophy (for all that I love philosophy), they reach for mathematics in some way, shape, or form.
In all seriousness, I don't think even AI hallucinates this much. We should genuinely be concerned for society.
Do you see how our statements do not contradict each other?