The math world is losing its mind over the new solution to an Erdős problem. This is what AI found, how we missed it—and why it matters.

The closest the field has come to solving the planar unit distance problem, first proposed in the 1940s, was in 1984. Now, OpenAI claims an internal model has cracked the puzzle.

News that large language models (LLM) have made major advances in solving Erdős problems – a set of problems formulated by the renowned 20 th-century mathematician Paul Erdős – has created an ...