Story perspectives

OpenAI Model Disproves Erdos Conjecture, Wins Mathematicians’ Praise

5/22/2026

Summary

Story summary

OpenAI announced its reasoning model beat the square-grid approach and disproved the 1946 Erdos planar unit distance conjecture.
Mathematicians Noga Alon, Melanie Wood and Thomas Bloom endorsed the proof, with Fields Medalist Tim Gowers calling it a milestone.
OpenAI said the model is not math-specific, may affect biology, physics, engineering and medicine, and follows a false claim by former OpenAI VP Kevin Weil that GPT-5 solved ten Erdos problems.

History

Historical Context

In 1976 Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken spent 1,200 hours on an IBM mainframe to deliver the first computer-assisted proof, the Four Color Theorem. Their success spurred advances such as the 1996 quadratic-time coloring algorithm of Robertson, Sanders, Seymour and Thomas and the 2005 Coq formalization. Building on this legacy, OpenAI’s reasoning model has now disproved Paul Erdos’s 1946 planar unit-distance conjecture.

1 of 2

Story summary

OpenAI announced its reasoning model beat the square-grid approach and disproved the 1946 Erdos planar unit distance conjecture.
Mathematicians Noga Alon, Melanie Wood and Thomas Bloom endorsed the proof, with Fields Medalist Tim Gowers calling it a milestone.
OpenAI said the model is not math-specific, may affect biology, physics, engineering and medicine, and follows a false claim by former OpenAI VP Kevin Weil that GPT-5 solved ten Erdos problems.

1 / 2