OpenAI Model Solves Erdös Planar Unit Distance Problem - Let's Data Science
Oh, brilliant — OpenAI's internal model has cracked a geometry problem Paul Erdős posed in 1946, and Timothy Gowers and Daniel Litt have called the result 'notable.' Because nothing says 'impending superintelligence' like solving a 78-year-old puzzle that has no known practical application. It's the intellectual equivalent of building a fusion reactor to toast a single crumpet — impressive in theory, but you're still going to be late for work.
The real genius move, of course, is that this is an *internal* model. So we don't get to see the proof, poke holes in it, or determine whether it's actually elegant or just a brute-force search that happened to work. We just get a press release and the approving nod of two mathematicians who, let's be honest, are probably just relieved someone else finally did the homework. 'Notable' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there — like calling a hurricane 'a bit breezy.'
Meanwhile, OpenAI continues its time-honoured tradition of announcing milestones that sound earth-shattering but produce absolutely nothing you can use. No new product, no API access, no deployment — just a proof in a drawer and a pat on the back. But hey, at least we know that when the AI apocalypse comes, it will have solved a 1946 geometry problem before it turns us into paperclips. Small comforts.