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AI Cracks 90-Year-Old Math Mystery
21 Jul
Summary
- AI model Fable 5 disproved the nearly 90-year-old Jacobian conjecture.
- Mathematician Levent Alpöge announced the AI's findings on social media.
- Experts debate the significance, likening it to a 'painful search' vs. true insight.
A significant mathematical problem, the Jacobian conjecture, has reportedly been disproved by Anthropic's Fable 5 AI model. Mathematician Levent Alpöge announced the breakthrough on X, highlighting the AI's role in solving a problem that has challenged mathematicians for approximately 90 years. This conjecture was notably included in Stephen Smale's list of unresolved problems from 1998.
Experts express mixed views on the AI's contribution. Andrew Blumberg, a mathematician and computer scientist, stated that this type of task is expected from advanced AI, likening it to a machine efficiently searching through numerous possibilities. He differentiated this counterexample from a constructive proof, suggesting it offers little new mathematical understanding.
This development follows OpenAI's announcement of an internal model disproving the Erdős unit distance conjecture earlier. Blumberg noted that the Erdős conjecture's disproof was more productive, leading to further research. However, he cautioned that the Jacobian conjecture's counterexample, while an AI feat, may not yield similar insights into the structure of mathematics.
