High School Students Solve Fields Medalist's Open Problem With AI Help
Two Oak Park High School students published a 75-page proof on Lorentzian polynomials using Claude and GPT, sparking debate over AI's role in mathematical discovery.
What to know
- Two pre-university students solved an open problem in Lorentzian polynomial theory, a field pioneered by Fields Medalist June Huh, with heavy reliance on AI tools for computation and proof generation.
- The achievement intensifies debate over AI's role in mathematical discovery: whether using AI assistants represents a new research skill or undermines the intellectual authenticity of the work.
- The timing is notable—the breakthrough follows an open letter from 25 Fields Medalists expressing concerns about AI's impact on mathematical rigor.
- Key tensions remain unresolved: the degree to which the students versus the postdoc versus the AI actually solved the problem, and whether the independent verification of AI-suggested proofs constitutes genuine mathematical understanding.
The dispute Whether solving a proof with heavy AI assistance—even after independent verification—represents genuine mathematical achievement or merely regurgitation and interpolation of existing knowledge. · positions read across 11 posts and comments
AI diminishes the intellectual authenticity and credit should go to the tool, not the students.
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“This is a bit like Enhanced Olympics, except that you have someone else compete for you. My issue is that it makes it hard to distinguish real insight/work.”
random3 · Hacker News ↗
Effectively using AI to solve hard problems is itself a valuable and emerging skill worth recognizing.
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“I sort of wonder if effectively using AI to solve math problems is a skill in its own right, distinct from traditional mathematical skills.”
Xcelerate · Hacker News ↗
Questions about the students' actual comprehension and the postdoc's role remain unanswered.
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“This looks like a graduate-level proof. Did these high school students really understand what they were doing? I'd like to see what they have to say.”
esafak · Hacker News ↗
Aayush Bathija High school student, lead authorPrince Rohatgi High school student, co-authorDaniel Soskin UCLA postdoctoral researcher, advisorJune Huh Fields Medalist, pioneered Lorentzian polynomial theory
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Commenters raise questions about AI's role in the proof and students' understanding
Hacker News commenters debate whether the students genuinely understood the graduate-level work or whether AI effectively solved it for them. Some question how much credit is due to the postdoc versus the students, while others note the achievement highlights a new skill: effectively using AI to solve complex problems.
“This looks like a graduate-level proof. Did these high school students really understand what they were doing? I'd like to see what they have to say.”
— esafak -
note HEAVILY> The students heavily utilized AI assistants, specifically Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, for computational exploration, proof idea generation, and editing.this is a bit like Enhanced Olympics(https://www.enhanced.com), except that you have someone else compete for you.My issue is that it makes it hard to distinguish real insight/work…
2 more of the top 3 · 11 posts in this stretch
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Real title includes:> Unsolved Problem by Fields Medalist Breached by Two High School Students with AIMy title recommendation: Fields Medalist Problem Solved With AIThey used AI for “computation, proof idea generation, and editing assistance”.It’s a bit odd how they list the AIs used - “Claude Opus 5, Anthropic and ChatGPT Sol5.6 were used for…
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This looks like a graduate-level proof. Did these high school students really understand what they were doing? I'd like to see what they have to say.
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Oak Park students publish AI-assisted proof of open problem in Lorentzian polynomials
Aayush Bathija and Prince Rohatgi, with guidance from UCLA postdoctoral researcher Daniel Soskin, released a 75-page paper titled "Bounded Ratios for Lorentzian Polynomials" on arXiv. The work solves an open problem related to the theory of Lorentzian polynomials pioneered by Fields Medalist June Huh, determining which coefficient ratios have universal upper bounds across all polynomials in the class.
“The students heavily utilized AI assistants, specifically Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, for computational exploration, proof idea generation, and editing.”
— HTX news report
What people are saying 6 voices from 1 site · best of 11 · verbatim
- Sep 14
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Haven't you heard? Fields Medalists believe it only counts when they do the solving - not the unwashed.
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It means that the solution is merely an interpolation of existing work and not fundamentally innovative as AI can only regurgitate, never creating something new.
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Working backwards from the Navier-Stokes solution, I was able to walk Astra through the path used to solve it. It took some formulation, starting with the problem, then challenging it to look closer at the specific path, and iterating when it got stuck, it was able to reach the solution.
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Great short term achievement but humanity is better served by these kids doing it without AI. The ideas have to come from the next generation (eg would we be worried if a 5 year old wrote the great American novel with AI or not?)
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the fact that you have to encourage these models and tell them that they can solve these problems and warm up on easier problems seems to indicate that there's something to AI pairing above and beyond prompt
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I sort of wonder if effectively using AI to solve math problems is a skill in its own right, distinct from traditional mathematical skills. I don’t just mean “prompt engineering” either. More so figuring out how to combine agents with other tools and approaches in an effective way.