OpenAI GPT-5.4 Pro reportedly 两小时内攻克长期未解的 Erdős 数学难题

OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Pro model has apparently solved Erdős open math problem #1196. The model reportedly found the solution in about 80 minutes and prepared it as a LaTeX paper in another 30. Formal verification is underway.

Mathematician Terence Tao commented in the Erdős Problems forum that the work reveals a previously undescribed connection between the anatomy of integers and Markov process theory. "That would be a meaningful contribution to the anatomy of integers that goes well beyond the solution of this particular Erdos problem," Tao writes. Kevin Barreto, who says he'll soon join OpenAI's AI for Science team, noted in the same forum that the Markov chain technique the model used was a creative step human mathematicians had overlooked despite years of work on the problem.

The discussion is interesting because there's an ongoing debate about whether LLMs can discover new knowledge in mathematics and other disciplines that goes beyond the data points learned during training. This example shows that new, previously undescribed knowledge can also be hidden within already known data points.