Claude Fable 5 AI finds a tiny formula that topples an 87-year-old math conjecture
A mathematician at Anthropic used the company's Claude Fable 5 AI model to find a counterexample to the 87-year-old Jacobian conjecture in algebraic geometry. This breakthrough highlights the growing utility of large language models in solving complex, abstract mathematical problems.
Why it matters
The use of AI to solve long-standing mathematical problems demonstrates a significant shift in how research and discovery are conducted in theoretical fields.
As millions of people were coming down from the excitement of the FIFA World Cup Final recently, a different kind of excitement was building within the mathematical community.
Levent Alp ge, a mathematician working at the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, made a very casual announcement on X that he had found a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, a very old and well-known problem in a field of mathematics called algebraic geometry. He had done this using Anthropic's large language model Claude Fable 5, released to the general public only a few weeks ago.
This is just the latest of many striking mathematical breakthroughs made by mathematicians working with large language models. But this one feels a little different to those that have come before.
First, what is a conjecture? It's an idea that some mathematicians believe is true but nobody has been able to prove or disprove.
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