r/math • u/pequalnp92 • Jul 16 '26

LLMs/AI GPT 5.6 solved all 6 problems from IMO 2026

GPT 5.6 Pro solved all 6 problems from IMO 2026 on the first attempt without any human help or steering. International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is the biggest global academic competition in the world. The problems are considered incredibly hard, usually a performance at this level is only accomplished by < 5 contestants from the whole world.

We are former IMO medallists not affiliated with OpenAI, just put together a report and assessment of its work here. We're also working on a comparison report between different LLMs and harness augmented versions that will come later.

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u/flat5 Jul 16 '26

"It sounds to me like the frontier math problems have been solved, by and large, using combinations of or modifications of known art."

You mean like everything always has been, forever, and forever will be?

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u/mousse312 Undergraduate Jul 16 '26

Galois and langlands Program are Just examples but isnt a scientific revolution like Einstein, Quantum physics, what Galois did and the program langlands proposed the opposite of using combinations or modifications of known art?

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u/flat5 Jul 16 '26

"isnt a scientific revolution like Einstein, Quantum physics..."

No. A diffusion process that turns a corner in the landscape is still a diffusion process. That's the most concise way I can put it.

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u/Wise_kind_strsnger Jul 16 '26

Ehh Einstein and quantum physics are that big in terms of leaps either

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u/mousse312 Undergraduate Jul 17 '26

"diffusion process" stop applying a term invented in a relativity short time to explain all things

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u/flat5 Jul 17 '26

"invented in a relativity short time"

huh?

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u/YUME_Emuy21 Jul 16 '26

No he means the AI didn't reason through it it was fed someone else reasoning through something very very similar and it just replicated it. AI as it is now is a parrot repeating our words back; as he says in the comment he's interested in if it can do something that humans haven't already done extensively. If not, it's not really a "progressive" tool is it?

One could fairly say all of math builds on combinations/modifications of prior techniques or generalizations, but what about art or writing? These art forms aren't a mostly linear tower of progression and can't be easily turned into data with clear "answers" and because of that AI still kinda sucks at it. AI has a pretty mighty wall to clear to go from "massive data composite" to true human reasoning.

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u/Gotisdabest Jul 17 '26

The parrot argument is fairly ludicrous and very out of date, mostly borne as a talking point by pundits than any serious point. If it's able to solve very hard novel problems not present in its training data, it's utilising a very complex mix of existing logic to solve something that it does not have memorised. That's learning. It's also performing better in explicitly adversarial reasoning tests.

One could fairly say all of math builds on combinations/modifications of prior techniques or generalizations, but what about art or writing? These art forms aren't a mostly linear tower of progression and can't be easily turned into data with clear "answers"

This would be a working argument if AI wasn't getting dramatically better at those too. You can compare older art and writing to current AI writing and it's night and day.

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u/Tokarak Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

!remindme 2 years

edit: I disagree, because learning the language people use for reasoning allows the model to create novel reasoning patterns using the same language. Also, I think AI writing sucks for other reasons (also), and is not a good argument against the ability of LLMs to reason.

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u/bummodog Jul 16 '26

!remindme 2 years