AI thinks like a mathematician! OpenAI model solves olympiad problems
OpenAI’s model reportedly solved five out of six problems under the same conditions as human participants.
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OpenAI’s latest experimental LLM has accomplished what many thought was years away, achieving gold medal-level performance at the International Math Olympiad (IMO), a feat traditionally reserved for the world’s brightest teenage minds.
While much of the narrative around AI has centered on its brute-force abilities, coding, summarizing text, playing chess, this breakthrough is about something fundamentally different, creative problem-solving, deep reasoning and sustained mental focus over hours.
Unlike DeepMind’s AlphaGeometry, a system purpose-built for geometry problems, OpenAI’s model is a general-purpose large language model, not engineered specifically for math. Yet it managed to solve five out of six problems in conditions matching those of IMO participants. The problems are known for requiring not just computation but inventiveness and mathematical intuition, qualities once thought unique to humans.
“This is a turning point,” said OpenAI researcher Alexander Wei, who framed the result as a milestone in general-purpose reinforcement learning. CEO Sam Altman echoed the sentiment, calling the achievement a distant dream at OpenAI’s founding, now made real.
Notably, the model isn’t just giving quick, surface-level answers. Researcher Noam Brown emphasized the system’s ability to “think for a long time,” reflecting the kind of mental endurance and creativity needed for Olympiad problems.
The development comes just weeks after mathematician Terence Tao, an IMO gold medalist, expressed doubts on a podcast about AI’s readiness for such challenges. Tao had suggested AI aim for smaller contests first. Instead, OpenAI leapfrogged straight to the top.
However, AI skeptic Gary Marcus applauded the result but questioned the model’s general intelligence and transparency around training data, while also noting that the IMO has yet to independently verify the claims.
