By Alex Wilkins
Publication Date: 2026-05-21 15:13:00
The planar unit distance problem is about how many equally sized lines you can draw connecting points on an infinite sheet of paper
Noga Alon et al. 2026, Open AI
An 80-year-old mathematical conjecture that has eluded the world’s greatest mathematicians has been cracked by an artificial intelligence model developed by OpenAI. The result has stunned experts and is being hailed as a seismic moment for AI’s mathematical capabilities.
“This is a problem that I did not expect to be solved in my lifetime,” says Misha Rudnev from the University of Bristol, UK. “It’s absolutely a bombshell.”
Tim Gowers from the University of Cambridge wrote in a blog post about the work that the solution is “a milestone in AI mathematics.” “If a person had written the work and submitted it to… Annals of Mathematics and had I been asked for a quick opinion, I would have recommended acceptance without hesitation. No previous AI-generated evidence came close to this.”
