OpenAI Says 372 Math Results Came Mostly From One Prompt

OpenAI released 372 mathematical results from an unreleased internal model, and a company spokesperson told Scientific American the new model "produced almost every one of the results in response to a single prompt handed to a single AI agent," though some needed multiple attempts.

The haul includes a claimed resolution of the four-dimensional Kakeya conjecture and progress toward the Riemann hypothesis, with proofs posted in a public GitHub repository. Per-result compute averaged roughly three hours of ChatGPT Pro inference, a sharp drop from the "10,000-strong agentic swarm that cost millions of dollars" OpenAI used on an earlier Navier-Stokes result.

Mathematicians want receipts. "Until and unless they release the model and people can replicate their results, I think you should treat any claims about one-shotting problems with a single agent as unverified," MIT's Andrew Sutherland said. An independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Advanced Study had recommended OpenAI publish the model, the exact prompt, and compute time per problem; the company released only averages, and the spokesperson said OpenAI "is not bound by these recommendations."

Not every mathematician sides with secrecy. "If we want to know the answers to these math questions, I see no reason why we should ask the company to keep them secret from us," said Toronto mathematician Daniel Litt. Terence Tao has called the pace of AI-generated results from frontier labs "insane."

The post lands inside a steady drumbeat of OpenAI coverage on our beat, and the field now has 372 claims to work through, plus a repository to pick apart.