Mathematician Alex Kontorovich: IMO is 'too easy' for AI now — labs will quit headline math next
AlexKontorovich · x · 2026-09-05
Rutgers math professor Alex Kontorovich recounts: two summers ago AlphaProof missed an IMO gold medal by one point; last summer half a dozen labs claimed gold-level performance. He predicted zero systems would chase gold this summer — because nobody cares anymore, and the IMO reverts to something 17-year-olds do.
He says he was largely right: the IMO has gone quiet because it's 'just too easy.' His next prediction: the number of major math problems labs publicize solving next summer will also be zero — not because they can't, but because such problems will return to being the work of professors, postdocs, and grad students.
Related event: Mathematician Predicts AI IMO Gold Will Soon Be Ignored(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Grady Booch revives Weinberg's 1971 quip: software so buggy one woodpecker could destroy civilization — Grady_Booch · 2026-10-23
- Why Netflix keeps losing to YouTube: UGC platforms professionalize easier than pro platforms go casual — ZeroStateReflex · 2026-10-23
- AI killed the coding moat: indie devs now compete on demand and distribution — sven_ai · 2026-10-23
- DynaVelo, a neural ODE model of single-cell dynamics, published in Nature Biotechnology — anshulkundaje · 2026-10-23
- Beff Jezos: Only frontier labs out-accelerating open source can secure systems — beffjezos · 2026-10-23
- 'I don't want to live in that world': a Redditor on why AGI utopia feels meaningless — peace_venerable · 2026-10-23