OpenAI’s sly mathematical breakthrough sends a chill through academia

OpenAI’s announcement Tuesday that it has solved one of mathematics’ legendary Millennium Prize problems should have been a moment of triumph. The result is both an undeniable achievement and a striking demonstration of just how rapidly AI is transforming mathematics. But before it was even formally announced, the breakthrough had been complicated by the unusual circumstances that prompted OpenAI to pursue the problem: After hearing other researchers were making progress, it seems to have thrown its considerable resources into a last-minute effort to beat them to the punch. The ensuing controversy has surfaced allegations of scooping, spying, and flagrant violations of long-standing academic norms that researchers fear could have a chilling effect on the field.

As Abhishek Saha, a mathematics professor at Queen Mary University of London, explains it, OpenAI has engaged in the “kind of things that mathematicians will generally not do.”