OpenAI forms math advisory group as its AI resolves more than 100 open problems

OpenAI on Monday announced an independent advisory group on mathematics, hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, as the company said an internal model has resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics.

The Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence is meant to give mathematicians a formal channel into OpenAI's math-oriented research. "This group will serve as a bridge to the mathematical community and broader public, giving mathematicians a voice in how we move forward," the company wrote in its announcement.

A bridge to the mathematical community

The group will assess the significance of new mathematical results, advise on how their release should be coordinated, and comment on academic and professional standards of research. It will also advise on how OpenAI's tools can support mathematical research and learning. Its nine founding members are François Charles (ENS-PSL), Camillo De Lellis (IAS), Timothy Gowers (Collège de France and Cambridge), Martin Hairer (EPFL and Imperial College London), Nikhil Srivastava (Berkeley), Ulrike Tillmann (Oxford), Ravi Vakil (Stanford), Edward Witten (IAS) and Melanie Matchett Wood (Harvard). Members are unpaid, may offer advice OpenAI did not request, may publish their views, and control the group's membership.

More than 100 open problems

OpenAI says it began training the model behind those results on August 28. Alongside a solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem, the model has settled more than 100 open problems, and the pace of its progress surprised mathematicians inside the company, prompting internal discussion about how to prepare the wider field.

The speed has unsettled outsiders too. Earlier in September, 25 Fields Medal winners signed an open letter titled "A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics," arguing that AI labs are threatening mathematicians' intellectual work as they compete over famous problems.

No say over the pace of research

The group will not be able to slow that work down. "The group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics," OpenAI wrote. In its own statement, the group makes the same point: it offers advice, but has "no decision making power at any AI company, and the responsibility for the decisions made by any company will rest with that company."

In a guest post on Terence Tao's blog, the group said OpenAI approached some of its members about an external advisory board, and the mathematicians decided to form an independent body instead. Its first task is advising on how to coordinate the release of the many significant results OpenAI attributes to its model; the group is gathering community input through a form on agmai.org. Only one of the nine members, De Lellis, also signed the Fields Medalists' letter.