Halis Sünnetci
27 October 2026•Update: 27 October 2026
US artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced three scientific discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and theoretical physics, claiming its AI models produced proofs that address longstanding problems that have challenged researchers for decades.
The ChatGPT developer said in a statement Monday that its models produced a proof of the local smoothing conjecture in all dimensions, which would also resolve the Kakeya conjecture and Stein's restriction conjecture.
It said the proof, generated on Oct. 18, was formalized the following day using Lean, a mathematical proof-checking system.
In computer science, OpenAI claimed its AI had disproved the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a longstanding conjecture about the computational difficulty of solving certain problems that has underpinned hundreds of research papers.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will also examine the result, which was formalized in Lean.
In theoretical physics, OpenAI said its models had developed existence proofs for certain four-dimensional quantum field theories, including quantum chromodynamics, which describes the strong nuclear force.
The work also includes a proposed proof of the existence of pure Yang-Mills theory, addressing part of one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize problems.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist David Gross will lead researchers examining the physics findings, which have not yet been publicly released.
OpenAI described the AI-generated manuscripts as raw research data, saying independent academic groups would examine and explain the findings. The company also pledged financial support for the process.
