AI's greatest mathematical successes have come from answering problems posed by Paul Erdős, a prolific mid-20th century iconoclast. On May 20, 2026, Open AI announced that an internal model had found a counterexample to the "unit distance" problem, a 1946 conjecture by Erdős. This marked the first historically significant proof from an AI model, bringing in innovative ideas from distant mathematical branches.

Following this, an unreleased model named Astra made 10 additional mathematical advances, including solutions to three more Erdős problems. Mathematicians like Noga Alon suggest these developments represent a phase transition in AI capability.

This resurgence is aided by Thomas Bloom, who launched erdosproblems.com to catalog Erdős's vast output. By using LLMs to write code and manage the site, Bloom has helped a growing community—ranging from amateurs to legends like Terence Tao—collaborate on these historic mathematical puzzles.