A few short years ago, asking AI to add two four-digit numbers together for a third-grade math assignment would have been a bad idea. Over half the time, the answer would be wrong, studies have shown. Long division or a “leaky tank” problem, an algebra class staple? Forget about it.
Although AI still struggles with arithmetic, in 2024, Google DeepMind’s AI systems scored high enough for a silver medal in an elite high-school competition that tests mathematical reasoning rather than basic calculation. A year later, OpenAI grabbed the gold.
That was just a warm-up.
In May 2026, AI made headway on a question that mathematician Paul Erdős posed in 1946. Given a fixed number of dots on a flat surface, how many pairs can sit exactly one unit apart? Experts had a long-standing prediction, but the bot overturned it once and for all.
In a crowning moment in September, OpenAI announced that their agents found a solution to the Navier Stokes problem, which describes how fluids move. The answer could help scientists understand when computer predictions of air or blood flow become unreliable.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
