Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers tests ChatGPT 5.5 Pro: it turns a decades-old exponential bound polynomial in 17 minutes
ChrSzegedy · x · 2026-10-29
Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers handed an open problem from a new additive combinatorics paper to ChatGPT 5.5 Pro with no fancy prompts — just the problem statement. After 17 minutes of reasoning, the model produced a complete LaTeX preprint that reduced a bound that had been exponential for decades down to polynomial, using a construction nobody had tried on this class of problems. Reviewer Isaac Rajagopal, who wrote the paper being improved upon, called the key idea "completely original" and "quite ingenious." Gowers then gave the harder generalized version, and within an hour the model produced a stronger result, again going exponential to polynomial.
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