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tAI Crushed the Math Olympiad—Or Did It?
The models often employ a “best-of-*n*” strategy, generating multiple solutions and then grading themselves to select the strongest. This is akin to having several students work independently, then get together to pick the best solution and submit only that one.
IMO gold medalist Terence Tao https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-will-become-mathematicians-co-pilot/ (currently a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles) noted on Mastodon https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114881418225852441 hat what AI can do depends on what the testing methodology is. IMO president Gregor Dolinar said that the organization “cannot validate the methods \[used by the AI models\], including the amount of compute used or whether there was any human involvement, or whether the results can be reproduced https://imo2025.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMO-2025_ClosingDayStatement-19072025.pdf.”
Besides, IMO exam questions don’t compare to the kinds of questions professional mathematicians try to answer, where it can take nine years, rather than nine hours, to solve a problem at the frontier of mathematical research.
#science
The models often employ a “best-of-*n*” strategy, generating multiple solutions and then grading themselves to select the strongest. This is akin to having several students work independently, then get together to pick the best solution and submit only that one.
IMO gold medalist Terence Tao https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-will-become-mathematicians-co-pilot/ (currently a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles) noted on Mastodon https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/114881418225852441 hat what AI can do depends on what the testing methodology is. IMO president Gregor Dolinar said that the organization “cannot validate the methods \[used by the AI models\], including the amount of compute used or whether there was any human involvement, or whether the results can be reproduced https://imo2025.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMO-2025_ClosingDayStatement-19072025.pdf.”
Besides, IMO exam questions don’t compare to the kinds of questions professional mathematicians try to answer, where it can take nine years, rather than nine hours, to solve a problem at the frontier of mathematical research.
#science
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