While AI systems struggle with original research creativity, OpenAI has solved ten verified open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science using an internal version of Astra, signaling AI's arrival in domains where verifiability replaces subjective taste.

OpenAI's internal Astra model solved ten open problems across geometry, coding theory, complexity, group theory, cryptography, and combinatorics, with experts confirming their significance — read either as emerging creative intuition or as powerful verifiable engineering. ✦ AI generated

Jack Clark (Import AI), quoting OpenAI and Henry Yuen · Import AI · 2026-08-03 · original ↗

These problems span high-dimensional geometry, coding theory, arithmetic circuit complexity, group theory, operator algebras, quantum complexity, lattice cryptography and extremal combinatorics. All of these problems are of substantial interest to their respective mathematical communities, and several are of broad interest across mathematics as a whole. ... New circuit lower bounds? A simple, easy-to-describe non-sofic group? Hardness of approximation for CVP without needing a unique games-like conjecture? I didn't just hear about these problems from my friends or from seminars. I feel their importance in my bones; I deeply care about the answers to these questions.

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