GPT-5.6 Closes a 30-Year Gap in Convex Optimization
GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization
I am sharing news that OpenAI's GPT-5.6 reportedly used a prompt to solve a decades-old problem in convex optimization. This breakthrough suggests that advanced AI models are now capable of tackling complex mathematical challenges that have stumped researchers for thirty years. The announcement has sparked significant discussion within the math community about the evolving role of large language models in scientific discovery.
GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization.
- _alternator_
I know a bit about this field. This conjecture reads as somewhat more niche than the cyclic double cover conjecture recently proved by OpenAI, but nevertheless represents a real contribution.
You want to know how long it takes to solve an optimization problem, in this case over convex, lipschitz functions. (The restriction to a spherical domain is not really a restriction, you can just change variables for any bounded domain.) Anyway, showing upper bounds on time complexity is "easy" because it's just the runtime of your algorithm. Showing (nontrivial) lower bounds is usually much harder because it requires constraining all algorithms.
This proof apparently shows that the lower bound time complexity is equal to the time complexity of an existing 30-year old algorithm: it requires Omega(d^2) function evaluations to solve over this class of functions.
My gut says likely implies that d is the minimal number of evaluations if you have a gradient oracle because you can approximate a gradient with d function evaluations, but I'm not sure how hard it is to make that rigorous.
- rakel_rakel
> I don't think researchers in math/TCS will be made obsolete, but I think it will instead no longer make sense to work on any low-hanging, or even medium-hanging (you know what I mean) fruit. We'll be needed for problems where actual novel approaches are needed.
I wonder how this compares to what we see happening with "juniors" in software development?
In math research, do you also get the training for the profession from working on the low hanging fruits for a while, to then move to the medium-hanging, and later go on to work on previously unsolved stuff?
- YeGoblynQueenne
So if you dig down a bit it turns out the author had been trying to solve that problem for a year with GPT 5.4 and 5.5 and he fed all that information to the prompt he gave to Sol Pro which may or may not had direct access to the author's chat history. So the claimed "148 minutes" was really "a year plus 148 minutes".
Moreover, it seems the prompt included the technique used to solve the problem:
https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1uxj3cy/after_openais...
In the prompt I basically just throw all reasonable approaches at it, without making a big distinction for what to explore most, and these approaches would all be reasonable for someone who knows the area. Sol helped me with the prompt as well, for which I gave it the CDC prompt, some ideas and specifications, a crystal clear problem description, and then modified things slightly myself after. One thing I do wonder is how much it accessed memory of previous chats, since as mentioned I had worked with 5.5 and 5.4 on this previously, and the main construction is not so different from something I discussed there. But, the function class max of affine functions that worked in the end was also in my prompt, so I'm not totally sure.
So it's not clear to me the degree to which "GPT-5.6 used a prompt" to close the gap etc, or the author basically did all the work himself and assigned it to GPT-5.6 out of enthusiasm.
- d4rkp4ttern
In the Reddit post there was clarification that this was done with Sol Pro not Ultra - curious what is everyone’s mental model of the difference.
My understanding is that ChatGPT Pro is effectively a multi agent system, or somehow uses multiple LLMs in parallel and selects a best answer. And Ultra is more similar to Claude-Code UltraCode where the main agent can choose to create a dynamic JS workflow that deterministically orchestrates multiple agents to handle different parts of a task and have adversarial checkers etc.
Is that more or less the difference? Any substantiating sources would be great to see.
- a_imho
If I recall correctly there was a proposed proof to the abc conjecture by Mochizuki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abc_conjecture#Claimed_proofs which was rejected due to being rather inpenetrable to humans. Shouldn't this be an ideal target for LLMs?
- mw67
Crazy how intelligence is cheap, efficient and commonplace now.
We humans better refocusing our energy on our core values/principles, given most of our skills are becoming irrelevant
- ChrisArchitect
Non-reddit: https://medium.com/@kerger.p/an-ai-assisted-breakthrough-in-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48939768)
- applfanboysbgon
Two points:
- Hasn't been peer reviewed yet, so take with a grain of salt. This applies to all claimed proofs, not just AI-generated ones. Even humans hallucinate proofs too!
- The prompt is on page 27 here[1]. It is ten pages of advanced mathematics priming the model in the right direction, apparently informed by a year of prior research. That doesn't invalidate the result if it is genuine, but it is worth noting that this wasn't a matter of "ChatGPT, solve this unsolved problem. Make no mistakes." and required substantial domain expertise and human research beforehand.
- spwa4
The problem is that we're going to have another deepseek moment when someone uses GLM or Kimi K3 to do this.
- jdw64
What I'm feeling is that there's a need to study how to use AI well. I've seen professors using AI, and it was amazing. In that sense, I think AI prompt input will become stratified. In the past, implementation skills were very important, but these days, concepts feel more important this is one of those things.
It's not that AI brings equality, but rather that the output varies depending on how much background knowledge you have. You could call it a stratification of input
I'm starting to feel like there's no place left for programmers like me who focus on quickly churning out MVPs.