During a videoconference organized by the Société Mathématique de France on October 8, mathematician Hugo Duminil-Copin, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2022, shared a poignant moment from his life. “On Tuesday night, I cried, and it woke my daughter,” he recounted. This emotional response was triggered by OpenAI, a prominent American artificial intelligence company, which recently announced the release of over 719 manuscripts—organized into 372 families—believed to address numerous unresolved mathematical challenges. Notably, 16 of these inquiries were closely tied to Duminil-Copin's own research.
Calmly, he remarked, "They have annihilated my field of research." To illustrate his feelings, he presented an AI-generated slide showing a rabbit being crushed by multiple trucks, implying that the AI’s actions were a deliberate assault on the domain of mathematics. He later alluded to the recent developments as a "dismantling of our activity" during a question-and-answer segment.
The situation has created considerable anxiety within the mathematics community, especially after OpenAI’s announcement on September 8 that its algorithms had solved the long-standing Navier-Stokes problem, offering a million-dollar prize since 2000 for its resolution. This revelation came as a shock, marking the third time Duminil-Copin faced such disheartening news. Earlier in April, he and a collaborator had recognized the capabilities of a competing AI from Anthropic, which had successfully tackled a complex problem, presenting its findings in a clear and sophisticated manner.
