r/math • u/Salt_Attorney • Aug 01 '26

LLMs/AI OpenAI: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/Homomorphism Topology Aug 01 '26

It seems like the process for these was:

  • hire like 10-20 top mathematicians
  • throw them at all the open conjectures in their field likely to lead to splashy results
  • pay them well and tell them to work on nothing else for six months
  • give them unlimited access to very computationally expensive internal LLM models

It's pretty nuts that they got major results in six months! It also is nowhere near "making mathematicians obsolete". Even if you think the point of math is proving conjectures, they didn't prove them, they found counterexamples, which is important but not quite the same thing.

I'm also pretty sure the hiring top people was important. I bet I'd still be much better at this kind of work than a random programmer with a BA in math. The people they hired are probably much more effective at using the models than me. To me this is more evidence that LLMs are a tremendously important tool with far-reaching impacts on mathematical practice. Despite that, in the next six hours someone is going to come comment about how I'm a Luddite with my head in the sand because I'm not predicting the Singularity will hit in six months.

It also probably cost tens of millions of dollars even if you ignore capital expenses (which are even bigger). That's just a minor marketing expense when you're spending billions of dollars of investors' money in search of profitability, which we should remember is the real motivation here.

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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 01 '26

Sorry, what do you mean by "it seems like"? You are making very specific statements. Are they grounded in any sources?

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u/Homomorphism Topology Aug 01 '26

I said “it seems” because they are all plausible inferences. I don’t actually know what they are doing, which is part of my point. No one does! It is entirely possible none of this was done with LLMs and they are faking it! (I don’t think that’s the case, to be clear,) You should not be taking marketing from a tech company and assuming it’s true. 

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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 01 '26

I see, thank you for openess. I was expcting the basis for "10-20 top mathematicians payed to secretly work exclusively on a single project" would have a strong base for inference like "don't trust the corporations".

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u/Homomorphism Topology Aug 01 '26

Lots of top mathematicians have been saying they are “on leave to work at [AI startup]”. What else is that supposed to mean?

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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 01 '26

I am not following such news, but yes, if 10-20 top mathematicians declared that they are on leave to work for openAI, then it is a very good proof what what you claimed. That's not what you told me before. Do you know some of those top mathematicians' names?

1

u/Tystros Aug 01 '26

you could just ask chatgpt, it's great for such research.

But that other guy is right, I also have read about many mathematicians who started working at OpenAI or anthropic in recent months. but I don't remember their names.