• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is conflicted about how AI models are changing fields like mathematics.
• Altman said that he had some "sadness and melancholy" when he saw what OpenAI's models could do.
• Prominent mathematicians have blasted AI companies for pursuing some of the field's most complex problems.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he feels conflicted about OpenAI solving some of math's biggest problems.

"As I said, I don't think it was bad for AI," Altman told Stripe President John Collison during an episode of "Cheeky Pint" that was released on Thursday. 'And I think, on net, the world deserves to understand how the universe works. But I do have empathy for the method."

A number of prominent mathematicians have blasted AI companies for pushing frontier models to solve some of the most complex math problems. OpenAI pulled out of a Caltech "math hackathon" after current and former Caltech mathematicians and others in the field said the event was "likely to have destructive impacts for the mathematical community."

Separately, 28 Fields Medal winners published their own open letter, warning that "the push by AI companies to solve mathematical problems as a benchmark is detrimental to the science of mathematics, and to the mathematical community."

OpenAI received considerable attention after announcing that its models had solved a 90-year-old, unresolved problem related to the Navier-Stokes equations, a set of formulas that predict how liquids and gases move. The Clay Mathematics Institute had offered $1 million to anyone who could determine whether those formulas would always behave as we would expect in the physical universe, part of a series of difficult mathematical questions known as the "Millennium Problems." OpenAI said that its AI models found an example where the equations do not, and end up with a "singularity" where a vortex starts spinning infinitely quickly.

Altman said OpenAI is "working through" how to continue scientific research while also making sure those in highly specialized fields "get the best version of the future that they can have."

"I would like to figure out a way to do this that is as sensitive to the communities that have driven these fields forward for centuries as we can," he said, adding, "It's a hard thing."

Collison tried to assuage Altman's feelings, reminding the OpenAI CEO that "the longshoremen union weren't happy about the port automation."

Altman said part of the reason he feels differently about the whole experience is based on an OpenAI Slack channel that was named "Model Name-Hold My Beer" after the meme about if you think this is crazy just wait. (He did not explain if this was a released model or not.)

"People were just throwing that at the hardest problems they could," Altman said. "And people didn't think the model was going to do these things."

The AI model tackled "people's hardest research problems from their academic career." Altman said he was so excited, "I couldn't go to bed."

In addition to the euphoria, he said other feelings set in.

"I also had much more sadness and melancholy, and a feeling of something ending than I was expecting," Altman said.

The OpenAI CEO said it was "beautiful" that any mathematician could solve even the most formidable problem if only they worked hard enough. Altman said AI is changing that equation.

"I mean, certainly, most mathematicians never solve a Millennium Prize problem," he said. "But the idea that you might be able to."

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• Mathematicians need to develop their oft-neglected social skills, a math professor at Cornell said.
• Though AI can do the legwork on complex problems, personal charisma is a human-only skill, Steven Strogatz said.
• "Rizz is more and more in demand," he added.

"Social skills" and "mathematics" are terms not often grouped together. In the age of AI, one math scholar says that needs to change.

With AI now capable of handling the geeky legwork required by complex problems, Steven Strogatz, a lecturer and Susan and Barton Winokur Distinguished Professor at Cornell University, said mathematicians should prioritize developing their personal charm in order to set themselves apart.

"I'm starting to think that what makes a future mathematician or a math professor is your unique brand," Strogatz said in an interview with Grant Sanderson, a math educator affiliated with Stanford University.

"Rizz is in more and more demand because it's something that only people have," he added.

Rizz, a Gen Z slang term, is defined by Merriam-Webster as "romantic appeal or charm." (Strogatz, who is 67, appeared to use the term solely to mean charm or charisma. He did not suggest mathematicians need to work on their romantic prowess.)

"What we're selecting for is an element of mathematical rizz," said Sanderson. "The PhDs to be are not going to be differentiated by pure problem-solving abilities."

The brusque push of AI companies into mathematics has caused consternation and head-scratching from many a math geek, as the field ponders ways to stay relevant while OpenAI floods the zone with hundreds of proposed solutions to the world's most complex problems.

Some professors have sworn off AI altogether. Most, however, are trying to find ways to incorporate the technology into their work.

In September, a group of undergraduates at Caltech announced a "mathathon" event in which participants were encouraged to use AI to solve problems in a single, no-sleep sprint. Only days after the undergrads announced the event, a coalition of over 700 academics signed an open letter calling for its cancellation, citing its promotion of AI "slop."

Though the event is set to continue, with some slight alterations, the clash underscored an internal conflict in the math community over how to adapt to AI — a development poised to impact many burgeoning careers in the field.

"We've had whole research programs wiped out on Tuesday," Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU, said after OpenAI published 700 new findings about outstanding problems earlier this month.

The issue is of supreme importance to Strogatz, who has made several media appearances in the last couple of months. In an essay published in The Atlantic on Sunday, he put the issue in stark terms.

"I am a math professor, and my field is in crisis. Nobody in math is ever going to forget the year 2026," he wrote. "Unless this is really the end of the subject, and then nobody will remember anything about math anyway."

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