A.I. is solving problems that stumped the field for decades. Mathematicians look to Terence Tao for guidance on their altered world. "I have had the strangest week ever in my life," Tao said, after OpenAI announced the solution to yet another problem. A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. This was a line often invoked by the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, who was fuelled by coffee and amphetamines, slept little, travelled near-constantly, never married or had children, and published almost fifteen hundred papers in his lifetime, in collaboration with hundreds of other mathematicians. But Erdős was, in most ways, not machinelike. He called lecturing in mathematics "preaching," woke friends at odd hours by asking, "Is your brain open?," wore only silk underclothing on account of his sensitive skin, and claimed not to have learned how to butter toast until he was twenty-one. He gave away most of his earnings to charitable causes and to young mathematicians in need of funds for their education, and he offered bounties (sometimes ten dollars, sometimes a thousand) for solutions to mathematical problems he'd proposed. It has been said that, even above his remarkable contributions to the mathematical literature, he helped the discipline most profoundly by turning people who might otherwise have become hedge-fund managers or F.B.I. agents or lost souls into mathematicians. When he died, in 1996, at the age of eighty-three, he left behind about a thousand problems. Solving an Erdős problem is a great honor, as is having a low "Erdős number," a term that describes how many degrees of separation one is from having published work with him. Terence Tao was ten years old when Erdős visited his home town of Adelaide, Australia, in 1985. Erdős loved children and called them epsilons. Tao, a mathematics prodigy, had started taking college-level courses at age nine. Erdős posed a problem for him and Tao to work on together. A photograph of their meeting, taken by Tao's mother (who had been a math teacher before having kids), shows the young mathematician and the old one deep in thought, hands at chins, looking at the notepad before them.

OpenAI has announced that its AI models have made several scientific discoveries in mathematics, computer science and physics. The AI giant said on Monday that the three new discoveries concerned the fields of harmonic analysis, complexity theory and quantum field theory. Researchers in harmonic analysis, a branch of mathematics that studies how complex signals and functions can be broken down into elementary waves, had previously only proved the theory in three dimensions. Alex Iosevich, a professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester who specialises in harmonic analysis, said OpenAI appeared to have "cracked" the conjecture in a "historic development". "The conjecture was formulated by my PhD adviser, Chris Sogge, so it is near and dear to my heart, and the news was a shock at first," Iosevich told Al Jazeera.

'Like the Trump administration, the tech overlords have proceeded on the assumption they can ignore or override the will of the people.' 'Like the Trump administration, the tech overlords have proceeded on the assumption they can ignore or override the will of the people.' The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP's alignment with tech overlords over the public they're meant to serve "The world should accept some bad things happening," Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, said recently, "for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency." Like so many things tech oligarchs say, it's incoherent, since Altman would like to deny the world and the people in it the agency to decide whether or not we should accept his bad things. Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections. People are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought, mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle. I've been a fan of the film Terminator 2 forever, the one where a badass female protagonist leads the action-movie-style spectacular destruction of Skynet, the massive computer system that will otherwise go rogue and pit itself and a plethora of advanced weapons against the human race.

Generative AI has changed mathematics forever. In August, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced ten advances in mathematics and computer science made with their as-yet unreleased model Astra. The discoveries cover a wide range of mathematical fields, including geometry, cryptography and coding theory. These ten are just the latest in a rapidly growing list of mathematical breakthroughs made by generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems. OpenAI accompanied the announcement with a statement on "responsibility to the mathematical community".

You're viewing the US edition You can switch to the UK, AU or IE homepage at any time using this menu. Ryan Reynolds' desperate attempt to save Blake Lively exposed in furious texts demanding Sony do his bidding... as studio bosses privately called his wife's behavior'epic level stupid' Read the uncensored'Cornell 7' Snapchat messages: Inside fraternity brothers' group chat... and Jane Doe's texts that came later Cornell Jane Doe texted student she later accused of gang-rape to try and identify campus gossips, telling him'I love you king' as they claim everyone was'jealous' of them Disturbing texts Boston police officer sent underage cadet who he groomed for years before'passing her around' with twin brother...now one of them is accused of staging her murder as a suicide Billionaire oil tycoon accused of brutally dumping girlfriend bought a $30m NYC penthouse...while claiming he couldn't support her because of'cash flow,' lawsuit claims - now he's calling out her'greed' I've been with my husband for ten years - but I will never give him my phone password. I know how abuse can start... and exactly how to protect my privacy in six simple steps Frail Julie Andrews won't act again and walks with a cane: As she turns 91 far from view, industry insider reveals what's happening with reclusive actress Megabank labeled'shameful' and'un-American' in explosive federal probe over'race-based' mortgages for black homebuyers in major Trump administration DEI crackdown Chilling new video and call recordings expose Gypsy-Rose Blanchard's relationship with baby daddy Ken Urker before his death on 34th birthday NYPD releases bodycam footage after ICE agents shoot migrant, 28, in NYC after he'used car as battering ram' with five-year-old son in vehicle Trump's simmering anger over secret plot to take down Barron and Melania... as he raids $400m war chest to combat'unprecedented' probe of first family if election fears come true Show-off Jackson Hole mother, 46, loved to brag about her $2.5m Hawaii home and luxury vacations while toting $2,600 Goyard bag... but now her greed has landed her in prison More leaked audio reveals Ken Paxton's bitter rival thinks he'll lose: 'We need to teach Republicans a lesson' DC Insider poll: Trump recently likened loyal aide Natalie Harp to a Price is Right model. Which TV show would you like to see them go on together? Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's war with new neighbors over $5m Ohio mansion turns putrid: Locals fear raw sewage explosion, impaled deer and finally say the quiet part out loud at furious showdown meeting The AI'mathpocalypse': Artificial intelligence systems crack hundreds of unsolved problems, sparking fears that mathematicians could become obsolete OpenAI has sparked a crisis in the mathematics world after announcing an unreleased artificial intelligence tool has cracked hundreds of unsolved problems.

"There's a perception of mobster behavior" from leading AI companies, one mathematician tells WIRED as OpenAI prepares to release more than 100 new solutions to unsolved problems. In August, OpenAI convened around 40 mathematicians to discuss what to do if AI outpaces human capabilities in the field. The company hinted that its powerful models had solved hundreds of long-standing math problems, say people who were in attendance, but company representatives assured attendees it would not release the solutions all at once--an assurance OpenAI spokesperson Lindsay McCallum says the company is "not aware of"--and, worried by how the community might react, sought advice on how to publish the findings. Attendees responded with "a mixture of excitement and dread," but the meeting was a promising first step, recalls Northwestern University mathematician Bryna Kra. The group, she tells WIRED, asked the firm not to just publish them in a blog or tweet, like they had done with 10 problems earlier that month .

Welcome to our monthly digest, where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, peruse the latest news, recap recent events, and more. This month, we meet AI pioneer Ken Goldberg, use AI techniques to track animal populations, investigate how to improve recommender systems, and find out how external knowledge is used in AI systems. In the latest instalment in our AI pioneers series, we spoke to award-winning roboticist, filmmaker, and artist, Ken Goldberg . We discussed the culture clash within robotics, what art and science have to learn from each other, and how AI will shape the future of art. Deep learning is a powerful tool for understanding animal behaviour and tracking populations.

Powerful AI models have created an existential risk to the field, but researchers can't stop relying on them because they're too useful. Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster believes OpenAI used his work to rush ahead and beat him to solving a legendary math problem with a $1 million bounty. But that's not been enough for him to stop using the company's models--and he's not the only mathematician that feels that way. "Even if you don't agree with any of this, you're kind of stuck. With AI being so useful, it's hard to completely prevent oneself from using it," Buckmaster tells WIRED.

AI just solved one of the world's hardest math problems. In late July, one of the world's most famous mathematicians issued a warning to his field. Math is entering a "turbulent period," the UCLA professor Terence Tao said in front of a packed lecture hall at the International Congress of Mathematicians. AI is getting so good at math, he said, that it's causing a "crisis in our mathematical values and practices." Earlier in the same week that Tao gave his talk at math's most prestigious conference, a researcher at Anthropic had used Claude to disprove an 87-year-old math conjecture.

Steven Strogatz coauthored a book about how math is moving beyond human understanding. He spoke with WIRED about the seismic impact artificial intelligence has had on his life's work. Mathematician and author Steven Strogatz starts to cry when he talks about the artificial-intelligence -driven breakthroughs in his field over the past week. "The science is thrilling," the Cornell University professor says, "but there's a lot of human unpleasantness going with it." On Tuesday, OpenAI said it had used tens of thousands of agents to solve a 90-year-old math problem, which had a $1 million prize attached.