Part of The Rogue AI Crisis · 14 stories · since Sep 22 · newest 9h ago
OpenAI's 722-paper math dump splits mathematicians, forces retractionsCommentators question whether the AHM's boycott argument holds up
7 Oct 9 1:15 PM · 4d ago · 4 articles · 26 posts · 7 comments · 7 sources · development 7 of 7
Opinion pieces and mathematician blog posts argued that refusing to engage with OpenAI's results would only reduce mathematicians' influence over how the technology develops, rather than slow the technology itself.
“"Staggering." "Overwhelming." "Unprecedented." "Surreal." "Pure insanity."”
mathematicians, quoted by The Verge, mathematicians interviewed by reporters · rss ↗OpenAI Releasing labAssociation for Human Mathematics Mathematicians' advocacy groupTerence Tao Mathematician
Zvi Mowshowitz Independent AI analyst / blogger
The whole story articlespostscomments the bright band is this development · numbered dots are the others · click one to jump
Reported in the same hours no headline names this development itself — these 6 claims were published in its stretch
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first by Straits Times, 4d ago · also NYT, NYT Science
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2 outlets Is this the ‘mathocalypse’? Why OpenAI’s latest results dump has left mathematicians in shock
first by Mastodon, 1d ago · also The Conversation
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first by Mastodon, 4d ago · also The Verge
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first by Le Monde.fr, 1d ago
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first by Business Insider, 4d ago
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first by Bloomberg.com, 4d ago
What people said 22 voices · verbatim
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NYU math professor Tristan Buckmaster says OpenAI’s Tuesday drop of 722 AI-generated math papers has "destroyed the careers of early career mathematicians.”
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"A senior colleague of mine found one of his favourite problems among those solved and attempted to read the accompanying paper. He told me it was so unintelligible that, had he received it as an editor at a mathematics journal, “it would have gone straight into the bin”. —Melissa Lee, Monash University https:// theconversation.com/is-this-th…
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I guess, but did you not learn calculus? Linear algebra? In the process of getting your PhD, did you not have to digest other people’s work? They “gave you the answer “ by telling you that what Newton discovered/invented (not trying to get into that one!) is true. Certainly the job will be different and I understand not “wanting” to do it, but I…
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This is the key bit.> But, back to the Partition Principle. I took a brief look at the preprint released by OpenAI (not at the Lean code, since I know very little of the actual usage of Lean, and that code was enormous). It sucked. It is unclear, muddled, and has a strange structure.Incredible lack of curiosity. The Lean artifact shows that there…
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OpenAI a lâché près de 400 résultats mathématiques générés par IA, répartis sur plus de 700 manuscrits 📚 De quoi occuper les mathématiciens pendant des années, entre émerveillement et vertige face à ce déluge. #IntelligenceArtificielle #Mathématiques #OpenAI theverge.com
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RE: https:// mathstodon.xyz/@highergeometer /117415296386994698 The thing is, to win, OpenAI doesn't have to get good at math research. They just have to make it nonviable for humans to work in math research
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I have no idea what you're taking issue with here, I'm echoing rather common sentiments of top researchers: A proof is more than a certificate that something is true. Instead, it is a story, a picture, an insight, an explanation. A proof highlights novel ideas and opens new directions for what we should ask next. It becomes part of the toolkit of…
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There is a lot of controversy about these AI proofs, with some good arguments.But what about the first computer assisted proofs? I remember that the proof of the 4 color theorem was a bit controversial, because it ended with a brute force search. The objections were similar to the ones we have today with AI proofs, such as the lack of insight.Are…
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Brilliant coverage by @theverge.com. Sad to see so many brilliant, especially grad and early career, mathematicians having to deal with AI slop: www.theverge.com/ai-artificia.... As I see it, it's all net negative.
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Oh my goodness. OpenAI just lobbed 400 huge slop grenades onto the mathematics community just so they could make a press release. Seemingly without even trying to check the results?! Absolute madness. The only reasonable response here is a huge “nope”. https://www. theverge.com/ai-artificial-int elligence/1008726/openai-mathematics-solutions-chaos
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Yes, that’s possible, but lean makes you write definitions extremely precisely. You have to go look at the formalized statement and decide if it’s what was intended to be proven. Formalizing a natural language statement into the language of lean is one of the trickier steps. The benefit of lean is that the logic is fully transparent and…
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> refuse to engageYou speak of this as if the default is to engage.To make an analogy: math is like OSS. You are free to fork and create your own feature, maintainer has no obligation to look at your PR and improve it to a state that’s worth merging. Eg This happened to Zig where the Bun team maintained a fork for a while. And I’m sure there’re…
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RE: https:// mathstodon.xyz/@highergeometer /117415296386994698 this is a general problem # ai # maths
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I want to be very clear about what you're saying is correct. Is it... The proof compiles and thus is valid, but we don't know what it proves, or The proof compiles and thus is valid, and it proves what it says it proves, and we know what that is, but we don't understand why it works?
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"OpenAI says its motivation in releasing the huge trove of results is to “enable further progress in mathematics”. However, the manner of the release is not necessarily conducive to this goal. A senior colleague of mine found one of his favourite problems among those solved and attempted to read the accompanying paper. He told me it was so…
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"Many described papers that were difficult, sometimes practically impossible, to follow." I'm reminded of this quote: "You are infringing on the time and brainpower of people by pushing 'your' content that little/no of your brainpower went into"* https://www. theverge.com/ai-artificial-int elligence/1008726/openai-mathematics-solutions-chaos…
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The warnings from Microsoft and Palantir’s CEOs that using frontier AI models means handing over your IP to companies that may eventually compete with you no longer seems like FUD. Just look at what’s happening to mathematicians and scientists. https://www. nature.com/articles/d41586-026 -03196-8
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If some OpenAI mathematics preprints are withdrawn and other preprint proofs are difficult to follow by experts in the field, is this progress or simply marketing? https:// retractionwatch.com/2026/10/08 /openai-withdraws-preprints-722-manuscripts-unsolved-math-problems/
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Nouveau coup de massue d’OpenAI sur les mathématiciens : « Ils ont annihilé mon domaine de recherche »
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Excellent reporting on the mathspocalypse www.theverge.com/ai-artificia... ‘Pure insanity’: Mathematician...
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https://www. theguardian.com/technology/202 6/oct/07/openai-mathematical-findings-concerns
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https://www. nytimes.com/2026/10/08/science /mathematicians-respond-openai-release.html
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