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Inside the Secret Meeting Where Mathematicians Struggled to Outsmart AI | Scientific American

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The world's leading mathematicians were stunned by how adept artificial intelligence is at doing their jobs BY LYNDIE CHIOU EDITED BY CLARA MOSKOWITZ Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images On a weekend in mid-May, a clandestine mathematical conclave convened. Thirty of the world’s most renowned mathematicians traveled to Berkeley, Calif., with some coming from as far away as the U.K. The group’s members faced off in a showdown with a “reasoning” chatbot that was tasked with solving problems they had devised to test its mathematical mettle. After throwing professor-level questions at the bot for two days, the researchers were stunned to discover it was capable of answering some of the world’s hardest solvable problems. “I have colleagues who literally said these models are approaching mathematical genius,” says Ken Ono, a mathematician at the University of Virginia and a leader and judge at the meeting. The chatbot in question is powered by o4-mini, a so-called reasoning large language model (LLM)

June 6, 2025 5 min read Add Us On Google Add SciAm At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI The world's leading mathematicians were stunned by how adept artificial intelligence is at doing their jobs By Lyndie Chiou edited by Clara Moskowitz Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images Love math? Sign up for our weekly newsletter Proof Positive Enter your email I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Scientific American and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy . We leverage third party services to both verify and deliver email. By providing your email address, you a

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