The AI goalpost keeps moving: from can't multiply to IMO gold, still not enough
IgorCarron · x · 2026-09-09
A widely shared observation: skeptics' goalposts on AI keep moving. Someone parodied the pattern by repeating "Quantum can't multiply 4-digit numbers" five times, mocking how the same script replays.
The original traces the evolution: "AI can't multiply 4-digit numbers" → "only brute-force silver at the IMO with specialized systems" → "a general model got gold, but it's just high schoolers' contest" → "a few trivial Erdős problems nobody seriously tried" → "serious mathematicians tried this one, but it was obvious in hindsight" → "well, there are still Millennium Prize Problems." Each milestone gets a new line of defense — a sharp summary of the goalpost-shifting dynamic in AI progress debates.
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