OpenAI on X: May 20, 2026: "Today, we share a breakthrough on the planar unit distance problem, a famous open question first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. For ne... (opens in new tab)

Today, we share a breakthrough on the planar unit distance problem, a famous open question first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. For nearly 80 years, mathematicians believed the best possible solutions looked roughly like square grids. An OpenAI model has now disproved that belief, discovering an entirely new family of constructions that performs better. This marks the first time AI has autonomously solved a prominent open problem central to a field of mathematics. The proof came from a general-...