GPT-5.4 Pro solves Erdős Problem #1196
Posted by fratellobigio 6 days ago
Comments
Comment by fratellobigio 6 days ago
Comment by isaacfrond 6 days ago
Comment by adrian_b 5 days ago
Comment by martin293 5 days ago
> Appreciate the insight! If it's at all of interest, this was a one-shot (supposed) solution in about 80 mins, unlike some other problems like 851 that took over 20 continuations totalling perhaps 15-20 hours of reasoning time.
Source: https://www.erdosproblems.com/forum/thread/1196#post-5365
Comment by applrt 6 days ago
That AI startup also partners with Terence Tao:
https://www.math.inc/veritas-fellowships
https://www.math.inc/a-conversation-with-terry-tao
These two AI "enthusiasts" have massive conflicts of interest, which should perhaps be investigated by an ethics commission.
Comment by mrkeen 6 days ago
Comment by sealion127 6 days ago
Comment by menaerus 5 days ago
Comment by qsera 6 days ago
Comment by seanhunter 6 days ago
So what is happening now is people now are nuking and paving the whole space with AI to prove their model can do maths, and we are all poorer for having this nice thing ruined in this way.
Comment by energy123 6 days ago
> I care deeply about this problem, and I've been thinking about it for the past 7 years. I'd frequently talk to Maynard about it in our meetings, and consulted over the years with several experts (Granville, Pomerance, Sound, Fox...) and others at Oxford and Stanford. This problem was not a question of low-visibility per-se. Rather, it seems like a proof which becomes strikingly compact post-hoc, but the construction is quite special among many similar variations.
> The conjecture is 60 years old and many experts had consulted on the problem, making partial progress. I mentioned this to @thomasfbloom, and he replied: "perhaps the first Book Proof from AI?"
Terence Tao says:
> In any case, I would indeed say that this is a situation in which the AI-generated paper inadvertently highlighted a tighter connection between two areas of mathematics (in this case, the anatomy of integers and the theory of Markov processes) than had previously been made explicit in the literature (though there were hints and precursors scattered therein which one can see in retrospect). That would be a meaningful contribution to the anatomy of integers that goes well beyond the solution of this particular Erdos problem.
Comment by krige 6 days ago
Comment by martin293 5 days ago
However, I think this is still likely a very significant achievement/milestone.
Comment by Zababa 6 days ago
Comment by energy123 6 days ago
Comment by Zababa 5 days ago
- Thomas Bloom is the current owner of https://www.erdosproblems.com/
- He previously posted on X on the 2025/10/17 the following:
> Hi, as the owner/maintainer of http://erdosproblems.com, this is a dramatic misrepresentation. GPT-5 found references, which solved these problems, that I personally was unaware of. The 'open' status only means I personally am unaware of a paper which solves it. [1]
> GPT-5 has been a very useful tool in searching the literature, and this has been a valuable addition to the website. Its literature searching ability is already useful and impressive enough, no need to describe it as something it's not! [2]
[1]: https://x.com/thomasfbloom/status/1979254235075059732
[2]: https://x.com/thomasfbloom/status/1979254675833549207
I don't have the mathematical chops or knowledge of mathematicians to evaluate any of that.
Comment by seanhunter 6 days ago
Comment by menaerus 6 days ago
Comment by adroniser 2 days ago
Comment by razorbeamz 6 days ago