// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
All the drama around AI’s takeover of mathematics
This past year, OpenAI, Anthropic, and other labs have announced breakthroughs on numerous long-standing mathematical problems, in some cases pushing well beyond what researchers expected current systems to be capable of — including resolving one of the famous Millennium Prize problems. But in classic Silicon Valley style, AI labs are moving fast and breaking things, barreling through the discipline with all the grace of a runaway bulldozer. Results that might normally have been celebrated have instead sparked backlash. AI labs say they are learning from earlier mistakes. Whether those promises bear fruit remains to be seen.
Read on below for the latest updates in the AI takeover of mathematics.
In a chaotic few months, OpenAI has demonstrated it can do two things with remarkable consistency: make impressive breakthroughs in mathematics, then colossally screw up announcing them. OpenAI is now trying to do better. Somehow, it has botched that too.
OpenAI’s latest attempt to repair fractured relations with a mathematical community it has repeatedly alienated is to consult a new independent advisory group of elite practitioners. But mathematicians speaking to The Verge, including one of the group’s members, describe a messy and confusing affair bearing many of the hallmarks of OpenAI’s previous rushed forays into mathematics, suggesting the company has learned little from its mistakes. And then there’s the daunting task the group has been handed first: helping coordinate the release of scores more results OpenAI says its unreleased model has produced, the prospect of which is already stirring dread among researchers over what this looming tidal wave of breakthroughs could do to their field.
After turning a string of spectacular mathematical results into a reputational crisis, OpenAI is consulting human mathematicians to help it figure out a less disastrous path forward.
On Monday, the company announced a new independent panel of mathematicians tasked with advising it and other AI companies on their interactions with mathematical research and the wider mathematics community, including how new results are presented and released. Its abrupt arrival caught many mathematicians by surprise. Researchers told The Verge the group is a good first step, but many said they were left with basic questions about what it will actually do, how much influence it will have, and whether OpenAI will actually listen to it, as well as concerns over whether such a small group of prominent researchers can represent the wider mathematical community.
OpenAI has spent the last few years planting flags across the increasingly difficult terrain in mathematics. This week, it claimed one of its biggest prizes yet: a solution to a legendary Millennium Prize problem. In normal circumstances, this would have been celebrated as a historic achievement.
Instead, many mathematicians have watched OpenAI’s relentless advance with growing unease. To them, the company appears less like an enthusiastic newcomer than an impossibly well-resourced interloper, charging into problems they have dedicated their lives to studying with little apparent regard for long-standing norms or the consequences for those left in its wake. At the heart of that unease is a sense that OpenAI is doing mathematics for different reasons. Mathematicians want to advance the field. OpenAI wants to win.
Another researcher is challenging OpenAI about the data driving its increasingly impressive array of mathematical discoveries. Just days after a bitter row erupted over whether the company’s models benefited from unpublished work, a second mathematician has come forward accusing the AI giant of unethical and “dishonest” behavior and a lack of transparency about the origins of its training data.
In a series of posts on Mastodon, mathematician Andreas Thom raised concerns that interactions he and his colleagues had had with the ChatGPT chatbot before OpenAI’s triumphant announcement may have con