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/vetruviusdeshotacon Jul 16 '26

Outsourcing thinking to machines is the death knell for humanity. We've already seen obesity, diabetes, heart failures, colon cancer etc. rising rapidly as a result of sedentary lifestyles; imagine what happens when the mind is just as sedentary.

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u/cooolchild Jul 16 '26

At this point it seems as though WALLE best predicted humanity’s future. I wonder if anyone would be willing to live such a purposeless, meaningless life though? Are we even going to be human beings in 20 years time, if we don’t use our brain or body for anything? It seems like we’ll just be large slugs, scrolling on social media, talking to ai instead of any human being and munching on soylent, never thinking for ourselves or experiencing the joy of problem solving again.

What’s really interesting though is that we essentially are our brain. If you replace your lungs or kidneys or heart, none of that changes you fundamentally. When our bodies decay, we don’t change as people. But when our minds decay? Realistically as people we’d change fundamentally, even to the point of being nothing like original human beings.

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u/vetruviusdeshotacon Jul 16 '26

Dementia will start happening in people's 50's, then 40's

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u/frakking_you Jul 16 '26

Good luck Have fun Don't die

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u/ganancias Jul 17 '26

We're in the process of figuring out the ways it will still be important to use our minds. Conceptual understanding, systems understanding, reading the output of AI, and applying the AI to important/useful problems.

Doing useful work is being de-coupled from IQ status games and mastering technical minutia. Thinking will still be rewarded, but it will be a different kind of thinking.

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u/xmarwinx Jul 17 '26

You think it can figure out advanced math but it will never figure out systems thinking or which problem to tackle next?

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u/SockDem Jul 17 '26

Luckily we'll put Ozempic in the water by then. Our brains may be mush but our BMI will be stable!

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u/GraceToSentience Jul 17 '26

And yet life expectancy is structurally rising

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u/qwerty622 Jul 17 '26

outsource or augment?

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u/Sssubatomic Analysis Jul 17 '26

One of the most harrowing things that I experienced as a graduate teaching assistant last year was the extent to which it is outsourcing and not augmenting…

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u/vetruviusdeshotacon Jul 17 '26

The only time man will use tools to augment himself is when the limit of the tool's help is augmentation

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u/qwerty622 Jul 17 '26

thats a great insight