OpenAI won gold at the world's toughest math exam. Why the Olympiad gold matters

India Today

7 days ago

In a jaw-dropping achievement for the world of artificial intelligence, OpenAI's latest experimental model has scored at the gold medal level at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) -- one of the toughest math exams on the planet.This is the same event held on the Sunshine Coast in Australia where India won six medals this year and ranked 7th amongst 110 participating countries.advertisementAI HITS GOLD IN THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST MATH TESTThe IMO is no ordinary competition. Since its launch in 1959 in Romania, it has become the gold standard for testing mathematical genius among high school students globally.
Over two intense days, participants face a gruelling four-and-a-half-hour paper with only three questions each day. These are not your average exam questions -- they demand deep logic, creativity and problem-solving stamina.Despite that, OpenAI's model solved five out of six questions correctly -- under the same testing conditions as human competitors.EXPERTS DOUBTED AI COULD DO THIS -- UNTIL NOWEven renowned mathematician Terence Tao -- an IMO gold medallist himself -- had doubts. In a podcast in June, he suggested that AI wasn't yet ready for the IMO level and should try simpler math contests first. But OpenAI has now proven otherwise."Also this model thinks for a *long* time. o1 thought for seconds. Deep Research for minutes. This one thinks for hours. Importantly, it's also more efficient with its thinking," Noam Brown from OpenAI wrote on LinkedIn."It's worth reflecting on just how fast AI progress has been, especially in math. In 2024, AI labs were using grade school math (GSM8K) as an eval in their model releases. Since then, we've saturated the (high school) MATH benchmark, then AIME, and now are at IMO gold," he added.WHY THIS IS A BIG DEAL FOR GENERAL AIThis isn't just about math. OpenAI says this shows their AI model is breaking new ground in general-purpose reasoning. Unlike Google DeepMind's AlphaGeometry -- built just for geometry -- OpenAI's model is a general large language model that happens to be great at math too."Typically for these AI results, like in Go/Dota/Poker/Diplomacy, researchers spend years making an AI that masters one narrow domain and does little else. But this isn't an IMO-specific model. It's a reasoning LLM that incorporates new experimental general-purpose techniques," Brown explained in his post.CEO Sam Altman called it 'a dream' when OpenAI began. 'This is a marker of how far AI has come in a decade.'advertisementBut before you get your hopes up, this high-performing AI isn't going public just yet. Altman confirmed it'll be 'many months' before this gold-level model is available.QUESTIONS STILL REMAINNot everyone is fully convinced. AI expert Gary Marcus called the model's results 'genuinely impressive' -- but raised fair questions about training methods, how useful this is for the average person, and how much it all costs.Still, the win marks a huge leap in what artificial intelligence can do -- and how fast it's improving.- EndsMust Watch