An artificial intelligence (AI) model has solved an 80-year-old math problem in a feat hailed as a major milestone for AI’s mathematical ability.
The planar unit distance problem, first posed by Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946, asks a seemingly simple question: What is the maximum number of pairs of points that can exist one unit apart on a two-dimensional plane? Erdős claimed this number would rise slightly faster than the number of dots.
The most accurate human upper bound to the problem was first set in 1984. But last week, OpenAI announced in a blog post that an internal AI model had solved the problem — finding a group of arrangements that broke past the limit set by Erdős.
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