Dev claims OpenAI helped disprove Erdős–Simonovits Turán conjecture, generalizing r=2 to all r≥2

ctjlewis · x · 2026-09-12

Developer ctjlewis says OpenAI disproved Erdős and Simonovits's conjecture about the Turán number of r-degenerate graphs, and that despite knowing no math he used it to generalize the r=2 case to all r≥2.

He says attempts to find volunteers to verify the proof drew hostility from mathematicians, so he ended up paying a combinatorialist at NYU, with whom he now has a good relationship—after a bitter back-and-forth that illustrates tension between AI-assisted math and academic collaboration culture.

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