Twenty-five leading mathematicians have signed an open letter accusing AI laboratories of threatening their intellectual work as these companies compete to solve famous mathematical problems. Each signatory is a recipient of the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics.
This week, NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster accused OpenAI of pressuring him to not credit a collaborator from Anthropic for solving a significant math problem. He questioned whether the company utilized their work with Codex to generate its own groundbreaking proof over a weekend of extensive computation.
On Thursday, OpenAI withdrew its sponsorship of a mathematics event at Caltech after the company faced criticism from researchers at the university.
While the capability of AI models to solve global mathematical challenges could benefit humanity, the signatories argue this will only occur if the solutions can be understood and communicated by the mathematical community and the world at large.
They wrote that these solutions are often announced in a rush, leaving no time for proper writeups, the isolation of new methods, or the citing of relevant prior work. Since OpenAI’s proof remains unverified, the letter raises severe attribution and plagiarism concerns. Furthermore, without the voluntary participation of mathematicians to develop and integrate AI-conceived ideas, these concepts would never become fully realized, and the crucial human transmission chain within the mathematics community would be severed.
With other mathematicians growing paranoid and wondering if their Codex usage was fed back into OpenAI’s newer models, there is genuine fear that the culture of open research is at risk. Currently, if frontier labs identify a useful path to discovery, they can spend millions of dollars using LLMs to beat original researchers to a proof—a dynamic that incentivizes secrecy.
This letter follows the Leiden Declaration, released by a mathematician working group in June. That document also addresses how LLM proofs will alter their profession and offers recommendations for mathematicians, institutions, and policymakers.
Similar to software engineering, mathematicians recognize value in the work surrounding the proofs themselves: the intellectual infrastructure that supports students, identifies new questions, and integrates discoveries into broader human civilization.
The signatories warn that other scientific and creative professions will face similar issues, indicating a potential challenge for all of humanity regarding how AI alters work without losing sight of its original purpose.
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