OpenAI's AI model disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture, a discrete geometry problem unsolved for 80 years.

In mid-May, OpenAI announced that an internal AI model had disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture. Fields Medal winner Tim Gowers called the solution 'a milestone in AI mathematics,' and University of Toronto professor Daniel Litt described it as 'the first example of a result produced autonomously by an AI that I find exciting in itself.'

The AI model applied existing ideas from multiple subfields of mathematics to construct a full proof, but did not pioneer genuinely new techniques. The result was subsequently cleaned up and extended by human mathematicians.

OpenAI views this as the next step in AI's progression in mathematics: three years ago LLMs struggled with arithmetic; last year they began acing high school math competitions; now an AI has autonomously resolved a major open conjecture. The article notes that a medium-term future may involve human mathematicians and AI models complementing each other, though it remains unclear what role human mathematicians will play a decade from now.