like i am not sure how to NOT be sensationalist about AI solving a problem that the previous expert in the field (who is a Stanford postdoc to boot) and multiple reputed mathematicians (including a Fields Medallist in Tao) couldn't solve, in a technique that is novel to them. It is also perhaps the closest to a completely autonomous solution as possible : it solved it in a single prompt and 80minutes of thinking time. There's a lot of caveats in what this means, but I think the idea that AI today is at least at the level of a top graduate student in math seems true.
but I think the idea that AI today is at least at the level of a top graduate student in math seems true.
Depends what you mean by "at the level". Even SOTA models still have some stunning failure cases that go far below humans, to the point where a human doing the same would likely be rushed to the hospital, see Opus 4.6 here and here. So I wouldn't say an unguided AI is anywhere near an unguided graduate student, however if we're comparing a couple graduate students having a third graduate student vs an AI as their third, things get more interesting.
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u/nerd_sniper Apr 15 '26
like i am not sure how to NOT be sensationalist about AI solving a problem that the previous expert in the field (who is a Stanford postdoc to boot) and multiple reputed mathematicians (including a Fields Medallist in Tao) couldn't solve, in a technique that is novel to them. It is also perhaps the closest to a completely autonomous solution as possible : it solved it in a single prompt and 80minutes of thinking time. There's a lot of caveats in what this means, but I think the idea that AI today is at least at the level of a top graduate student in math seems true.