Scott Aaronson: OpenAI's 372 math breakthroughs include a proof of the UGC
jedisct1 · x · 2026-10-08
Scott Aaronson recounts "The Mathocalypse": OpenAI, advised by Timothy Gowers, Edward Witten and others, released 372 major math results in one day — including a proof of Subhash Khot's Unique Games Conjecture, the problem his wife Dana Moshkovitz has worked on her whole career.
- Some proofs (including UGC) carry Lean certificates, yet no human has understood any of them yet; the race to do so is just starting.
- Dana's on-the-ground read: "like something written by someone on psychedelics" — so badly written it's unreadable without AI help.
- UGC implies a slew of optimization problems are NP-hard even for approximations slightly better than SDP relaxations.
Related event: OpenAI Drops 722 Papers Solving 372 Major Math Problems(2 posts)→
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