OpenAI Exits Caltech Mathathon After Mathematicians' Open Letter

OpenAI has pulled its sponsorship of the Caltech Mathathon, a hackathon scheduled for October 30 in which participants attack open research problems by prompting frontier LLMs, after current and former Caltech mathematicians published an open letter arguing the event 'is likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community.'

The letter said AI companies treat research mathematics as an 'advertising opportunity' and warned that sponsoring labs 'will take credit for the effort of talented undergrads.' The event was backed by roughly $2 million in AI credits jointly supplied by OpenAI and Anthropic, Business Insider reported.

Dan Roberts, OpenAI's research lead, said in a post on X: 'We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive. We're looking to engage with the math community more on the best way to integrate this technology and communicate its impacts.' Anthropic, the other listed sponsor, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The pullout lands during a rougher stretch for lab math claims. OpenAI's September 8 announcement that it had solved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem is being contested, and TU Dresden group theorist Andreas Thom has publicly questioned whether his private ChatGPT sessions fed into an OpenAI result on non-sofic groups. It arrives amid the sustained run of OpenAI coverage our tracker has followed through the summer.