OpenAI claims it solved an 80-year-old math problem — for real this time

OpenAI claims its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because this isn’t the first time OpenAI has made such a bold claim. Seven months ago , the AI giant’s former VP Kevil Weil posted on X: “GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdős problems and made progress on 11 others.” It turns out, GPT-5 didn’t actually solve those problems; it just found existing solutions that already existed in the literature. Taunts from rivals like Yann LeCun and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis followed, and Weil promptly took down his premature post. Today, at least, it seems OpenAI didn’t make the same mistake twice. Alongside the announcement, OpenAI published companion remarks in support of the disproof from mathematicians like Noga Alon, Melanie Wood, and Thomas Bloom, who maintains the Erdos Problems website , and previously called Weil’s post “a dramatic misrepresentation.” “For nearly 80 years, mathematicians believed the best possible solutions looked roughly like square grids,” OpenAI posted on X . …