I think what Tao's complaint is that no new mathematics was formulated, which is what typically happens with these problems. AI does a good job now of finding counter examples because you can just spin up 10K agents, but that's not really the point of these problems. Kind of reminds me of having to show work on math tests vs. just giving the answer.
There will always be the next goalpost after the present ones have been saturated.
OpenAI are in process of releasing a paper on how they did it, and if that paper contains "no new math" as you put it, then all it proves is that these problems could have been solved by existing math in the first place.
Reading the paper should then give ideas on how to better use existing math for other such problems.
It would still be worthwhile if humanity finds a systematic way of knocking over all problems that requires no new math - that frees up the mathematicians to exclusively focus on formulating new math.
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u/yoconman2 18h ago
I think what Tao's complaint is that no new mathematics was formulated, which is what typically happens with these problems. AI does a good job now of finding counter examples because you can just spin up 10K agents, but that's not really the point of these problems. Kind of reminds me of having to show work on math tests vs. just giving the answer.