Andrew Sutherland

Uh, said, quote, "Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship but a demonstration of power." It urged mathematicians to stop working with OpenAI.

Uh, regarding trust, MIT's Andrew Sutherland [clears throat] said many mathematicians are, quote, "Unhappy with how OpenAI has behaved," and it is, quote, uh, "It will take a lot more of, uh, to earn back the trust that they've lost." So, uh, Alex, uh, is this a devastating day for mathematicians or a glorious day for mathematicians? And, and separately, for all of us who are not mathematicians, why is this relevant?

I'd say it's a devastating day for the historic practice of mathematics and for mathematicians who were addicted to the old way of doing things professionally or personally.

Which was what? What was the old way of doing things?

He says OpenAI should have released the Lean verified papers first and then asked for help checking the rest.

Andrew Sutherland of MIT calls the quick withdrawal responsible, but he told Retraction Watch that it will take a lot more than that to earn back the trust they have lost.

The Association for Human Mathematics, a group chaired by Terence Tao, went further.

It called the release a demonstration of power and urged mathematicians to stop working with OpenAI.

And I imagine it stings when a machine sweeps into the exact corner of mathematics you spent years building your career around.

It surely does, and Andrew Sutherland at MIT gave what might become the slogan of this whole episode.

He told Scientific American that we should treat single-agent claims as unverified, and his exact words were, we should ask for receipts.

Ask for receipts is such a perfect phrase because it captures the core tension, which is that the results are public, but the model, the prompts, and the full reasoning that produced them are still locked inside the company.

So where do you land overall, Laura? Is this a historic moment for mathematics, or a very sophisticated public relations event, wrapped in a GitHub repository full of impressive-looking papers?

Honestly, I think it is both at once.

The mathematics may be real and even beautiful, but until the model, the prompts, and independent replication arrive, the right posture is exactly what Andrew Sutherland said.

Curious, excited, and firmly asking for receipts.

The set includes a Birch Swinnerton-Dyer leading term formula and unique Games conjecture claims.

MIT's Andrew Sutherland says one-shot claims stay unverified until the model is released and results replicate.

Northwestern's Brian Across says researchers wanted explanatory papers.

Critics say OpenAI used proprietary models in ways the September advisory group cautioned against.