An Amateur Just Solved a 60-Year-Old Math Problem—by Asking AI
"Fnord666" writes:
Liam Price just cracked a 60-year-old problem that world-class mathematicians have tried and failed to solve. He's 23 years old and has no advanced mathematics training. What he does have is a ChatGPT Pro subscription, which gives him access to the latest large language models from OpenAI.
Artificial intelligence has recently made headlines for solving a number of "Erds problems," conjectures left behind by the prolific mathematician Paul Erds. But experts have warned that these problems are an imperfect benchmark of artificial intelligence's mathematical prowess. They range dramatically in both significance and difficulty, and many AI solutions have turned out to be less original than they appeared.
The new solution -which Price got in response to a single prompt to GPT-5.4 Pro and posted on www.erdosproblems.com , a website devoted to the Erds problems, just over a week ago-is different. The problem it solves has eluded some prominent minds, bestowing it some esteem. And more importantly, the AI seems to have used a totally new method for problems of this kind. It's too soon to say with certainty, but this LLM-conceived connection may be useful for broader applications-something hard to find among recently touted AI triumphs in math.
"This one is a bit different because people did look at it, and the humans that looked at it just collectively made a slight wrong turn at move one," says Terence Tao, a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has become a prominent scorekeeper for AI's push into his field. "What's beginning to emerge is that the problem was maybe easier than expected, and it was like there was some kind of mental block."
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