An unreleased Anthropic model made progress on one of math’s biggest unsolved problems

The growing body of results has caused both excitement and concern in the mathematical field. In a public declaration signed in June, a group of prominent mathematicians raised concerns that AI could undermine critical values of the field — particularly the standard that true mathematical proofs should be “attributable to specific authors who take credit for their discovery and assume responsibility for their correctness.”

But the field is still split on how mathematicians should approach the new research techniques. In a blog post responding to the declaration, Fields Medal winner Timothy Gowers questioned whether the influence of AI might change mathematics in a more complex and positive way.

“If we arrive at a world where mathematical theorems are no longer associated with mathematicians, maybe that won’t be any more problematic than the fact that stars aren’t named after astronomers and most aren’t named at all,” Gowers wrote.