A new ‘golden age’ of mathematics may be dawning — thanks to AI and human ingenuity

This image depicts an idea from the counterexample to the unit distance conjecture — a mathematical problem posed in 1946 and solved in 2026 by generative AI. (Trefor Bazett) A new ‘golden age’ of mathematics may be dawning — thanks to AI and human ingenuity Published: July 23, 2026 11.18am EDT Share article Print article In May 2026, OpenAI released a new math result that sent shock waves throughout the world of mathematical research. A major unsolved problem called the “unit distance conjecture” had just been resolved by generative AI. Since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of new results that either partially or completely leverage artificial intelligence to solve research-level mathematics problems. However, most new math results published in any given month are still generated by humans. So where is this going? How good, and how quickly, will AI capabilities grow? Will most mathematical research be predominantly artificial intelligence? Or, as some mathematicians suggest, will AI combine with human ingenuity and other computer tools to create a golden age of mathematics? A list of unsolvable problems One of the most prolific mathematicians of the 20th century was Hungarian Paul Erdős, known for the breadth of his collaborations with mathematicians across many sub-fields. Paul Erdős teaches future mathematician Terence Tao in 1985, at the University of Adelaide. (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA Throughout his career, he proposed hundreds of unsolved problems that today are known as Erdős problems. This list is a tempting place to start for any AI company wishing to show it can solve problems in mathematics. Over the decades, human researchers have steadily resolved many of the Erdős problems, but a large number remain unsolved. One was the unit distance problem from the field of geometric graph theory. The author Trefor Bazett explains the unit distance problem. Humans on the shoulders of AI This wasn’t the first mathematical problem to be solved by AI — it wasn’t even the first Erdős problem to be solved by AI — but it was the most significant. The unit distance problem is a prominent one that many researchers have attempted to solve since 1946, when it was proposed. It was particularly noteworthy that, having read the proof of the unit distance problem by AI, it was human researchers who managed to adapt the central technique of the proof to solve — only a week later — another significant conjecture called the “sum-product…