{"id":46040,"date":"2026-05-20T22:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T22:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/46040\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T22:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T22:06:15","slug":"openai-claims-it-solved-an-80-year-old-math-problem-for-real-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/46040\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI claims it solved an 80-year-old math problem \u2014 for real this time"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI claims<\/a> its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erd\u0151s in 1946.<\/p>\n

If this sounds familiar to you, it\u2019s because this isn\u2019t the first time OpenAI has made such a bold claim. Seven months ago<\/a>, the AI giant\u2019s former VP Kevin Weil<\/a> posted on X: \u201cGPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erd\u0151s problems and made progress on 11 others.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out, GPT-5 didn\u2019t actually solve those problems; it just found solutions that already existed in the literature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taunts from rivals like Yann LeCun and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis followed, and Weil promptly took down his premature post. Today, at least, it seems OpenAI didn\u2019t make the same mistake twice. Alongside the announcement, the company published companion remarks<\/a> in support of the disproof from mathematicians like Noga Alon, Melanie Wood, and Thomas Bloom, who maintains the Erdos Problems website<\/a>, and previously called Weil\u2019s post \u201ca dramatic misrepresentation.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor nearly 80 years, mathematicians believed the best possible solutions looked roughly like square grids,\u201d OpenAI posted on X<\/a>. \u201cAn OpenAI model has now disproved that belief, discovering an entirely new family of constructions that performs better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company said this marks \u201cthe first time AI has autonomously solved a prominent open problem central to a field of mathematics.\u201d The proof, per OpenAI, came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, not a system specifically designed to solve math problems or even this problem in particular.\u00a0<\/p>\n

OpenAI says this is significant because it means AI systems are now more capable of holding together long, difficult chains of reasoning and connecting ideas across fields in ways researchers may not have previously explored. That has implications for biology, physics, engineering, and medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is helping us to more fully explore the cathedral of mathematics we have built over the centuries,\u201d Bloom said in a statement. \u201cWhat other unseen wonders are waiting in the wings?\u201d<\/p>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI claims its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[580,27868,157,10185],"class_list":["post-46040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-chatgpt","tag-erdos-problems","tag-openai","tag-reasoning-models"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}