‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release
New York Times · LC · trust 38/100
Hundreds of new A.I.-generated findings moved the frontiers of higher math in a single day — dispelling any doubt that the field is forever changed.
Share full article Experts say the cataclysmic upheaval to the field will affect students the most, especially graduate students on the cusp of becoming a part of this intellectual community. Credit... Ian C. Bates for The New York Times By Siobhan Roberts
“If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.”
That’s how Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, responded to an A.I.-generated proof that OpenAI, the artificial intelligence giant, released on Tuesday.
And that single proof — worthy, in Dr. Kontorovich’s assessment on social media, of arguably the highest honor in the field of mathematics — was just one among more than 350 findings that the firm released that day, all at once.
Not all of them were quite so remarkable. But Martin Bridson, a mathematician at Oxford and the president of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which established the coveted Millennium Prize Problems, called OpenAI’s release “breathtaking.”
“Until very recently, it would have been impossible to imagine that the frontiers of mathematics could move so far in one day,” Dr. Bridson said.
If there had been any doubt that the leaps achieved by artificial intelligence this year would transform the discipline of mathematics, the tens of thousands of pages let loose on Tuesday have put that doubt to rest. The puzzles apparently conquered by OpenAI include crucial open questions in nearly every subfield of math, including algebra, number theory, theoretical computer science, mathematical logic and topology.
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