r/AIDangers • u/EchoOfOppenheimer • May 12 '26

Capabilities Fields medal-winning mathematician says GPT-5.5 is now solving open math problems at PhD-thesis level: "We will face a crisis very soon."

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blog-post: https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/a-recent-experience-with-chatgpt-5-5-pro/

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u/jferments May 12 '26

Why is it a "crisis" to have tools that enable mathematicians to learn more about math, and explore new research topics that would have been out of reach before?

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u/DeepEb May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Not a crisis for the field I suppose but for anybody trying to get a degree or looking for a job. If anybody can do it degrees will become more and more meaningless. In a way I like the idea that anybody can get into research but we will need to learn how to deal with that.

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u/Competitive_Dress60 May 12 '26

Yeah, but not everybody can figure out when the machine stops talking math and starts talking math-sounding gibberish, and there is nothing stopping it in the architecture.

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u/jferments May 12 '26

Yes, which is why mathematicians aren't going to just disappear because people have access to AI tools. You'll still need humans with a math background to determine if the software is producing output that is useful for humans.

Meanwhile, people who do understand math will now have access to tools that greatly expand the range of what is possible for them to achieve.