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Twenty-five Fields medalists press AI labs over proofs announced without a write-up
The signatories say solutions announced in a rush arrive with no proper write-up and no citation of prior work, leaving the mathematicians who have to check them unnamed. OpenAI pulled a CalTech sponsorship on Thursday.
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What happened
- OpenAI research lead Dan Roberts said on Thursday that the company was pulling its sponsorship of the Caltech Mathathon after considering concerns raised by members of the mathematics community.
- OpenAI and Anthropic had jointly promised $2 million in credits to the 100 competing teams, with the first round of the contest due to begin on October 30.
- A separate open letter criticizing AI was signed by 25 more prominent mathematicians in the same week.
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Why it matters
- cost Organizers now have to raise $1 million in replacement credit, $10,000 for each of 100 teams, or every team runs its 40 hours on half the compute budget it planned around.
- exposure Anthropic is the other named funder while one of its own mathematicians is one of the two who raised the training-data question, so its credits sit on both sides of the dispute.
- precedent A vendor's donated tokens can be withdrawn on reputational grounds weeks before an event. Any competition or grant program built on free credit is conditional on the sponsor's standing with the participants.
- contradiction The mathematicians describe the event as destructive and OpenAI describes the underlying progress as disruptive, so the two sides do not agree on what the withdrawal concedes.
A team that signed up for the Mathathon had $20,000 in tokens and a 40-hour clock to spend it against, which is $500 of credit an hour [11][3]. Since Thursday that budget is $10,000, or $250 an hour, unless the organizers replace OpenAI's half [1][13][3]. Across 100 teams, that half comes to $1 million of the $2 million in credits OpenAI and Anthropic had promised jointly [1][12].
The competition asks its teams one question: "How can we responsibly use AI tools to augment human understanding of mathematics?" [2]. Paying for that question in your own tokens puts your model in front of the people best placed to check what it produced. The open letter from current and former Caltech mathematicians, reported this week by Business Insider, answered the question before the first round [4]. It said AI-driven "slop mathematics" effectively constitutes research misconduct, because it consumes the work of research mathematicians and uses it to scoop them on solutions without contributing to understanding [5]. It warned the Mathathon would have "destructive impacts for the mathematical community" [6].
That came the same week OpenAI said it had solved the Navier-Stokes problem [7]. NYU's Tristan Buckmaster and Anthropic's Levent Alpoge speculated openly about whether OpenAI had learned they were nearing a breakthrough and appropriated their work through training data [8].
The letter had used the word destructive [6]. Roberts wrote: "We recognize that the rapid progress of AI in mathematics is disruptive. We're looking to engage with the math community more on the best way to integrate this technology and communicate its impacts." [10] Gizmodo's report does not say whether Anthropic's half of the pledge still stands.
For anyone designing or accepting a program like this, two things about the Mathathon's design are worth writing down. Its premise was a claim about the sponsor's product that the participants were qualified to check, and the funding did not survive them checking it and publishing a no. The teams found out 50 days before the first round [2]. A team on the receiving end can protect itself by getting the commitment in writing, or by sizing the event to what it can run if the sponsor leaves. A sponsor can decide in advance what it will do when a participant contradicts its launch post, which is cheaper than deciding it the same week. The Mathathon's spokesperson told Gizmodo the event is "currently in talks with other firms who are willing to provide a similar amount per team as well" [13].
What to watch
- Whether Anthropic confirms its half of the $2 million pledge before the October 30 first round.
- Whether the Mathathon names a replacement sponsor at the $10,000-per-team level its spokesperson described.
- Whether OpenAI amends its Navier-Stokes claim or publishes a proof the disputing mathematicians accept.