Research — AI news & analysis

OpenAI's internal reasoning model disproves an 80-year-old Erdős conjecture

OpenAI announced May 20, 2026 that an internal general-purpose reasoning model autonomously disproved Paul Erdős's 1946 planar unit-distance conjecture — finding constructions that beat the long-assumed-optimal square grid. Companion paper co-authored by four named mathematicians including Fields medalist Tim Gowers, who called it 'a milestone in AI mathematics.' Not yet peer-reviewed by a journal, but verified by independent mathematicians including the researcher who exposed an earlier OpenAI false claim.