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MTS · 4 min · Oct 17, 2026

Researchers are racing to understand OpenAI's new proofs

SA

Scott Aaronson

Theoretical Computer Scientist, UT Austin

Quantum computing theorist who spent two years on AI safety at OpenAI and writes the Shtetl-Optimized blog.

  • Theo JaffeeHost · Co-founder & host, MTS

    One of the first members of a16z's new media team; earlier hosted the Emergent Ventures-backed Theo Jaffee Podcast.

  • Sophia DewHost · Host, MTS

About this segment

Aaronson says researchers paused other work to inspect the 370 proofs, including a problem he posed 20 years ago. A Columbia workshop was already unpacking that proof, a response he finds hopeful.

From “OpenAI Just Solved 370 Major Math Problems | Scott Aaronson”, Oct 17, 2026. Watch the full episode

“actual experts, you know, are mostly just rushing to understand the new, you know, theorems that have just dropped on us.”
SAScott Aaronsonat 4:11 · MTS4:11

Takeaways

  1. Researchers dropped other projects to inspect the results.
  2. A Columbia workshop tackled Aaronson's 20-year-old problem within a week.
  3. Seeing experts race to explain proofs gave him some optimism.
Watch 3:30 from 1:05

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 14:12AI crossed long-standing limits in multiplication and Fourier transforms5:32
  2. 4:26Mathematicians need to understand AI proofs, not dismiss them8:13
  3. 33:57AI solved research problems Aaronson had left untouched for 25 years3:29

  4. 1:05Researchers are racing to understand OpenAI's new proofs3:30

  5. 21:30Aaronson teaches alignment through competing perspectives4:58Up next
  6. 26:19Teach fundamentals, but emphasize students' own questions7:47

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 1:11

    Yeah. So yeah, I guess we could start with broad takes on the whole situation. I read your post about the age of wonders and terrors almost a month ago. How are you feeling now? Well, I mean, we are still, you know, in a mode of, you know, responding to what is happening. I mean, my wife is Donna Moskovitz is at Berkeley right now, you know, for a theoretical computer science program, right, which was supposed to be about, you know, other things, derandomization.

  2. 1:48

    It is now about this, right? I think all like, you know, across the mathematical research world, you have seen people drop what they are doing. You've seen them, you know, try to understand these solutions to many of their major open problems that OpenAI just dumped onto GitHub a week ago. You know, and this is the topic of conversation. So it would be fair to say that I've never seen a moment like this in my life in mathematical research.

  3. 2:22

    You know, some of my favorite problems were solved in there. And, you know, I've seen that even just within the last week, people have made a lot of progress on understanding some of these results. You know, and so, you know, for me, a question is, you know, do I sort of throw myself into trying to understand these things? Or do I wait for younger people to understand them, to, you know, re-explain them more comprehensibly and then try to understand what's going on?

  4. 2:59

    You know, it might be more of the latter for me. But, you know, so a question that I posed 20 years ago with Greg Kuperberg, which was called the unitary synthesis problem, was one of the, you know, 370 problems that OpenAI announced solutions to last week. And so, you know, just yesterday there was a workshop at Columbia already, you know, trying to explain and understand this proof. I joined that by Zoom when I was able to.

  5. 3:40

    um and um yeah it it it you know for all the you know the anxieties that people feel about the future of the field about you know what is what is there going to be left for us to do you know it has given me some optimism i think to see people you know instead of just like resigning or, you know, hiding under a rock somewhere, like they are racing to try to understand this stuff. And, you know, and it's like, you may get a misleading impression if you're looking on online and just seeing people, you know, arguing about it.

  6. 4:15

    But I think, you know, actual experts, you know, are mostly just rushing to understand the new, you know, theorems that have just dropped on us. yeah so i i wanted to ask you about this open letter of sorts that was published called a