Modern-day professionals face different challenges that get more individualized as industries grow and develop. Recently, creatives of all spheres have been loud and proud about their work, trying their best to avoid any type of association with the biggest buzzword of the corporate world- Artificial Intelligence.

​And it makes sense to hear these individuals, who face the threat of losing their work on a daily basis, protest in the most unusual ways they know. Artists, singers, directors, the main chef at your local favorite restaurant, the florist you visited last week, someone who decided to turn their gardening hobby into an actual job.

Creatives? With their heads in the sky, taking a million routes just to get to that one “why” that makes sense to them. They are in their own world, prideful in their resistance; it would take much work to shake them down.

So in this analysis, you would wonder why scientists come into the conversation. Those scientists who are also pretty persistent. Always ask a million questions and have a million whys. Aside from all their questioning, they usually have their two feet on the ground.

They hypothesize, they have their formulas, they research, they get exact results. They have proof, a method, a tangible pathway to a tangible finish.

Yet, one community in the scientific world is going through a super tough battle. Their biggest opponent? AI.

Who would have thought that mathematicians, people who are looking for definite answers, would go head-to-head with this big machine?​

What happened, exactly?

OpenAI is at it again! The company has come out with the announcement that the mathematical research field of the company has managed to find the solution to 370 unsolved math problems. The problem solutions vary from full to partial. Problems that have been known for their difficulty, seriousness, and mysticity in the field.

The volume of the problems solved and the results has left people stunned. In a good way and in a bad way. OpenAI clearly wants to take math to another level, and there is not much that can stop them, but many are not sure that this is the right way to do so.​

When addressing the public about the news, the company explained that for this process they used their own AI agents and a model that is not yet released to the public. It took the model approximately three hours to get to the solution of each equation.

By the looks of it, the majority of the solutions are correct, as results.  Most of the results have passed the Lean proof assistant seamlessly. This is a free-of-charge, open-source interactive theorem prover. It’s designed with the goal of formalizing and checking mathematical proofs using a computer. Lean features a small, trusted core program that verifies whether proofs are logically valid down to basic foundations.

Even this way, with all proofs on show where the final result is correct, the execution still seems to be misleading in some of the problems. According to people from the field, lean-approved and usable formulas are two completely different things.

The Math Community vs. AI; Round 2:

The concerns are understandable, especially since this isn’t the first case scenario of this sort. Mathematicians and AI already have some history, including recent events.

It was just a month ago when OpenAI proudly announced that they have found a solution to a millennial math problem. A problem that has been unresolved for a long time, with a million-dollar prize bounty for whoever solves it. Millennial math problems are the north star; they set future goals for the community, they showcase that math research is an ongoing process and that math can be an interactive study with many progressions, even in the modern, tech-led world.

And this news would be thrilling, if it wasn’t for an actual mathematician who, around the same time, highlighted that he and his colleague have done the same - they found a solution to the same millennial math problem. The catch was: in their human research and solving, they had used OpenAI’s agents, which then potentially used the human work to solve the problem more quickly.

The drama didn’t stop there. The whole “grand math moment” turned into a “man x machina” moment, industry competition, relevance of the real solver, and a lot of questions. Who gets to do these things today? How much money do you need to have to do something grand? Is anything really worth it?

The community was quick to respond. Twenty-five Field Medalists signed an open letter highlighting their concerns about what solutions like this one can mean for mathematical research.

The current situation isn’t far from what happened a month ago. Although people were quick to take sides, it seems that this two-way street in the world of math is far from being defined.

Originally, in the first case, it was OpenAI against a mathematician and his colleague. The community was the not-so-quiet spectator. Now OpenAI makes a bigger slam, targeting many mathematicians, mathematical researchers, and professors. The whole community is in the ring.

Division in the field

The “many problems, quick solutions” news has quickly reached and divided the math world.

There is no doubt that some people are excited for the progressive development of the field. Mathematicians, researchers, and curious enthusiasts all want to see where this change leads. Even the science world likes some instant. It creates a chance to explore new topics, dive into unexplored territory, and focus on new things. And not only this. It is also an opportunity to get a generated solution, but research the process and be more focused on that.

Getting to a solution will help step into the next one. A natural, real-world process which would be acceptable for a scientist.

On the parallel side, there is The Association for Human Mathematics (AHM). An organization dedicated to protecting the academics of math as a human endeavor against the threat of artificial intelligence. The AHM is focused on protecting every human element in the world of math, learning, researching, human collaboration, solution processes, and public interest in the field.

Regarding the latest events, the AHM has come out with a sharp statement asking colleagues who work on math advisory boards for AI companies to reconsider their work. They highlight that mathematicians have field-specific ideas that come from innocent human curiosity. This means that looking at the bigger picture, all the added AI urgency and effectiveness will be useless without human goals and scientific pathways that motivate future generations of math scientists.

An equation without the common denominator

Like everything else, the field of math - a sphere of an exact science- is going through some changes. How the changes are dealt with is something to be considered on a personal and community level.

It doesn’t seem that OpenAI is ready to drop the math experiments anytime soon. On the contrary, the company is excited for the advancement they can make in the field. Solutions, exclusivity, vastness of problems in a small timeframe, historical work put to use in modern-day problems… Seems like the possibilities are endless.

And you could say that they are… But it all comes down to humans. Humans who want to understand. Those who connect things, lean on each other's work to go the extra mile, and are constantly driven by the “why”. Those who train the models to do the work for them. Their vision in the AI world supports a new era of math, where even if results are received quickly, the pathway to them is still a mystery. Who gets to explore it? Us people, of course!

Mathematicians, artists, industries, fields- we will all find our way to transform the way we approach things as changes come. The powerful thing here is that humans don’t give up and they can be pretty adaptable… Even for certain and exact things like math.

Thinking about more AI news? Got more AI questions? We cover a bunch on our blog.

‍