On the last day of August, a human mathematician kicked off a flurry of advances on one of the most famous problems in number theory — and was almost instantly superseded by AI.
Julia Stadlmann of the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign reported a new record in the quest to solve the twin prime conjecture, which posits that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that are just two numbers apart (3 and 5 are twin primes, for example, as are 17 and 19). It was the first such advance in more than a decade.
It’s a “fiendishly difficult problem,” says mathematician Kannan Soundararajan of Stanford University, who says he admires Stadlmann’s persistence and courage. “It was really quite impressive.”
Within three days, an AI startup called Axiom Math had built on Stadlmann’s approaches to best her effort. Within two hours of Axiom’s announcement, both records were surpassed by OpenAI, which just five days later claimed to have solved another of math’s biggest puzzles.
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