🤖 OpenAI Model Solves 80-Year-Old Math Problem

An OpenAI model solved a math problem posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. The task was to find how to place n points on a plane so that the maximum number of pairs share the same fixed distance. For decades, the best known solution was a square grid arrangement.

The AI found a way to arrange points that produces significantly more pairs at a unit distance than any grid. It discovered an infinite family of such arrangements, using algebraic number theory methods never applied to this geometry problem before.

This was not a specialized math program but a general-purpose model. It was not trained or guided specifically to solve this problem, bridging two distant math fields in a way humans had not seen.

📊@tech