Did AI Just “Solve” Math? (Let’s Take a Closer Look) | AI Reality Check

0:00Last week, OpenAI published a press release titled, An OpenAI Model Has Disproved a Central Conjecture in Discrete Geometry.

0:10They were talking specifically about the planar unit distance problem, which was first posed by Paul Erdos in 1946.

0:17Now, this is actually a pretty simple problem to state.

0:19It basically says, what is the maximum number of pairs of points in a set of endpoints in a flat plane that can be exactly one unit of distance apart?

0:29Now, back in the 1940s, Erdos proposed an answer to this question.

0:34He couldn't prove it, but he thought he knew what the answer was.

0:37Last week, OpenAI essentially announced that they had used an LLM to prove that Erdos' proposed answer was, in fact, incorrect.

0:47The OpenAI press release was accompanied by a video that featured dramatic music and a group of researchers writing earnestly on a comically small blackboard as they explained why this was a big deal.

0:59Here, let's play a clip of that video.