Hey, I'm Floralixman, and you're listening to Science Friday.

When ChatGPT came out a few years ago, one of its most impressive features was its writing abilities.

But something it was often ridiculed for, you may remember, other than making images of seven-vinkered hands,

was its inability to do basic math.

Two plus two did not always equal four.

But recently, things have changed.

Last year, Google and OpenAI's models bagged gold medals at the International Mathematical

Olympiad, edging out some of the best high school

athletes in the world. And now some experts say AI is getting so good, it could pose an existential

threat to the field. Here with a perspective are two mathematicians who thought a lot about this,

Dr. Emily Real from Johns Hopkins University and Dr. Daniel Litt from the

University of Toronto. Emily Daniel, welcome to Science Friday. Hey. Thank you. All right. We have seen,

at least in the nerdy media that I consume these very big claims that AI suddenly is revolutionizing

math. It's fundamentally changing what it means to be

a mathematician. I want your takes on that. Emily, let's start with you. I think from the

perspective of a professional mathematician, we're trying to evaluate where AI is on kind of the

trajectory of a mathematician's life. So, you know, we're trying to evaluate where AI is on kind of the trajectory of a mathematician's life.

So, you know, we're first encountered a mathematics at school where you're solving problems that

have a numerical answer, maybe involving some geometric figures, maybe involving some arithmetic

or some algebra. As you mentioned already, AIIs used to be very bad at those problems,

and they're much better now. More recently, AIs have been doing well with more advanced contest-level

problems, a contest for undergraduate mathematics majors where they're writing proofs. And what's

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