Anthropic · OpenAI · US Congress · Claude · The Atlantic Technology
Math Can’t Go On Like
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In late July, one of the world’s most famous mathematicians issued a warning to his field.
Key facts
- Math is entering a “turbulent period,” the UCLA professor Terence Tao said in front of a packed lecture hall at the International Congress of Mathematicians
- OpenAI said its swarm of 10,000 AI agents solved the problem in less than four days
- We’re seeing how swiftly an entire field can be ravaged by AI,” Max Weinreich, a math professor at CUNY Baruch, told me
- The night before OpenAI announced its solution, the NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster released a statement alleging that he had been scooped by OpenAI
Summary
Earlier in the same week that Tao gave his talk at math’s most prestigious conference, a researcher at Anthropic had used Claude to disprove an 87-year-old math conjecture. Now mathematicians are paying attention. In the math world, the initial shock over OpenAI’s result has morphed into something of an existential reckoning for the discipline. OpenAI’s breakthrough is as notable as how it was achieved. The night before OpenAI announced its solution, the NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster released a statement alleging that he had been scooped by OpenAI.