In a stunning breakthrough, a 23-year-old amateur mathematician has reportedly solved a 60-year-old conjecture using OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Pro. Liam Price, who has no formal training in advanced mathematics, issued a single prompt to the AI and obtained a solution to a problem originally posed by the legendary mathematician Paul Erdős.
The problem involves primitive sets—collections of whole numbers where no member can be evenly divided by another. The conjecture had remained unsolved for six decades, stumping experts worldwide.
Price published the results to a dedicated database of Erdős problems, where it quickly caught the attention of leading mathematicians. Fields Medalist Terence Tao noted that the AI-generated solution employs a completely novel methodology that human researchers had previously overlooked.
Unlike earlier instances of AI-assisted mathematics, which often recycled existing frameworks, this solution reveals a new conceptual connection that may have broader applications. Experts believe the problem persisted due to a collective mental block regarding the initial approach—a barrier the large language model was able to bypass.
The story, originally reported by Joseph Howlett in Scientific American, highlights the growing potential of AI to uncover insights that humans have missed for decades.