Stunning AI Solution for 80-Year-Old Problem Shocks Mathematicians

OpenAI said an internal general-purpose AI model found a counterexample to Erdős’s 1946 planar unit distance conjecture.

Mathematicians later built on the same approach to strengthen the result, with work by Daniel Litt, Will Sawin, and Timothy Gowers.

Google DeepMind also used AI to solve several smaller Erdős problems.

The result suggests AI can help produce original mathematical insights with limited human guidance.