Siobhan Roberts at the New York Times:
“If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.”
That’s how Alex Kontorovich, chair of the department of mathematics at Rutgers, responded to an A.I.-generated proof that OpenAI, the artificial intelligence giant, released on Tuesday.
And that single proof — worthy, in Dr. Kontorovich’s assessment on social media, of arguably the highest honor in the field of mathematics — was just one among more than 350 findings that the firm released that day, all at once.
Not all of them were quite so remarkable. But Martin Bridson, a mathematician at Oxford and the president of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which established the coveted Millennium Prize Problems, called OpenAI’s release “breathtaking.”
“Until very recently, it would have been impossible to imagine that the frontiers of mathematics could move so far in one day,” Dr. Bridson said.
More here.
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