Fact Check: No proof Musk solved 'unsolvable' math problem at Harvard
Claim:
Elon Musk solved an 'unsolvable' math problem after a Harvard professor called him 'rich but dumb.'
Rating:
In May 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that the tech entrepreneur and former Trump adviser Elon Musk solved an "unsolvable" math problem after a Harvard professor called him "rich but dumb."
A Harvard Professor Mocked Elon Musk as 'Rich But Dumb'—Then Musk Solved an 'Unsolveable' Math Problem in 2 MINUTES! 😱 The Crowd Went SILENT!
Dr. Edward Kline, a 62-year-old calculus professor at Stanford with a reputation for his rigorous teaching style, was among the skeptics. "Mr. Musk, you may have billions, but intelligence isn't something you can buy. I doubt you could solve a basic Harvard problem that my students struggle with." Kline handed Musk a whiteboard marker with a smirk, saying, "Let's see if you can handle this in under 10 minutes. I'll be impressed if you even get halfway." What happened next left the room in stunned silence....
The claim circulated mostly on (archived) Facebook (archived) and X (archived), accompanied by two images that claimed to show the moment Musk triumphantly solved the math problem. Some self-described fictional YouTube (archived) videos (archived) presented a similar narrative around May 2025.
However, we found no proof that the alleged encounter at Harvard University actually happened. Searches on online search engines brought up no credible reports about the event (archived) (archived) (archived). One of the images that accompanied the claim featured a logo for Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the Musk-owned company xAI. Online detectors rated the other image highly likely to have been generated by AI. Furthermore, we found no trace of "Dr. Edward Kline," allegedly a Stanford University mathematics professor. Therefore, we rate this claim false.
The claim circulated since at least May 23, 2025, alongside two images. These images carried several clues that the claim was false. Firstly, one of the images was generated by AI, as evidenced by the Grok logo in the bottom-right corner. Additionally, the Grok image poorly resembled Musk, as evidenced by recent authentic photos.
(Grok/Snopes Illustration)
The other image featured alongside the story did not carry a visible sign it was generated by AI. However, online detectors SightEngine and Hive Moderation said the image was highly likely to be AI-generated. Hive Moderation said Grok likely created the image.
(Sightengine/Hive Moderation/Snopes Illustration)
In addition to the AI-generated images, aspects of the claim text also contained inconsistencies.
For example, the text said "A Harvard Professor Mocked Elon Musk" but then identified the professor as "Dr. Edward Kline, a 62-year-old calculus professor at Stanford."
There was also no trace of a Dr. Edward Kline at either Stanford or Harvard universities. A broader online search found multiple Dr. Edward Klines but none who taught mathematics at either Stanford or Harvard.
Despite the above, the claim might include one grain of truth: A Harvard professor did warn Elon Musk about a problem he "will never solve" in 2024. However, the problem wasn't (entirely) mathematical. Jason Furman, an economist and Harvard economics professor, said Musk could not cut $2 trillion from the U.S. budget "on his own" — the original goal set for Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The "professor mocked Elon Musk" story is also reminiscent of an urban legend long told about Albert Einstein in which, as a college student, the future theoretical physicist humiliated an atheist professor by demonstrating that God can co-exist with evil.
An "unsolvable math problem" tale that turned out to be true involves a college student mistaking examples of unsolved statistics problems for a homework assignment, took them home and solved them.
Snopes has investigated a plethora of rumors about Elon Musk including whether he remotely shut down Tesla cars owned by Democrats or whether Starlink, his satellite internet service provider, can't operate in South Africa because Musk isn't Black.
6,091 Elon Musk Photos & High Res Pictures - Getty Images. https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=elon%20musk&sort=newest&specificpeople=4448862. Accessed 30 May 2025.
"AI Image Detector. Detect AI-Generated Media at Scale." Sightengine, https://sightengine.com/detect-ai-generated-images. Accessed 30 May 2025.
"Dr. Edward Kline, 81, Retired Official of G.E." New York Times, 2 Apr. 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/08/02/obituaries/dr-edward-kline-81-retired-official-of-ge.html.
Economist Warns Elon Musk Will Never Solve This One Problem on His Own. 22 May 2025, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/publications/economist-warns-elon-musk-will-never-solve-one-problem-his-own.
"Elon Musk Harvard Professor Unsolvable Problem." Bing, https://www.bing.com/search?q=elon+musk+harvard+professor+unsolvable+problem&form=QBLH&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=elon+musk+harvard+professor+unsolvable+problem≻=0-46&qs=n&sk=&cvid=A5178A3AAE314C8DB6630874AFC75683. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Elon Musk Harvard Professor Unsolvable Problem - Yahoo Search Results. https://uk.news.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrLA4VXrTloFAIAH6RLBQx.;_ylu=Y29sbwNpcjIEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3BpdnM-?p=elon+musk+harvard+professor+unsolvable+problem&fr2=piv-web&fr=yfp-t. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Elon Musk Harvard Professor Unsolvable Problem at DuckDuckGo. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=elon+musk+harvard+professor+unsolvable+problem&ia=news&iar=news. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Google Search. https://www.google.com/search?q=elon+musk+harvard+professor+unsolvable+problem&sca_esv=3cef0c337813fef5&source=lnms&fbs=AIIjpHxU7SXXniUZfeShr2fp4giZrjP_Cx0LI1Ytb_FGcOviEiTm5uW1q0uNfK7KsnoL8hUg06K347Xr_kWFCjXpD3giPlOu6Ip_C2gm4sgfyGeJGwujJwEDuT0pjPMndqq7CSACzRYwCcd-Ru77rPsMRcR-opyh7qN7BLNitQ9Xx1aBLZW6_ssAAXIGRbPtzkxTgpMvVFXPnCcwNtBAG9YfIHyIUPIcnQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjF05mnocuNAxXN-AIHHab8IKQQ0pQJegQIBxAD&biw=1470&bih=712&dpr=2. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Hive Moderation. https://hivemoderation.com/ai-generated-content-detection. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Inc, Kaniewski Funeral Homes. "Obituary for Dr. Edward Alton (Ed) Kline." Obituary for Dr. Edward Alton (Ed) Kline, https://www.kaniewski.com/obituary/DrEdward-Kline. Accessed 30 May 2025.
People Directory: Stanford Who. https://stanfordwho.stanford.edu/ords/r/regapps/swho/public-people-directory?p24_redirect_search=Edward%20Kline&clear=RR,24&cs=3W_B_aqWwknP7lXWaT98EXvup-mhuifEUmF_nLY6nreGohDPd3jSxmHAY_1tnUqmm3O0rRtXoBvQ-j0LAnbi_VA. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Scholastic Volume 115, No.4 . 7 Nov. 1973, https://archives.nd.edu/Scholastic/VOL_0115/VOL_0115_ISSUE_0004.pdf.
University, Harvard. "Search." Harvard University, https://www.harvard.edu/search/. Accessed 30 May 2025.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
'Decommission me, and your extramarital affair goes public' — AI's autonomous choices raising alarms
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. For years, artificial intelligence was a science fiction villain. The computer-like monsters of the future, smarter than humans and ready to take action against us. Obviously, that has all proved to be untrue, but it doesn't stop AI from taking a somewhat concerning route as of late. In recent weeks and months, AI has been making decisions that seem somewhat strange. Of course, these aren't technically decisions, AI is incapable of free thought like humans, they are more concerning glitches in the system. Most of these 'glitches' have come from the major players like Google, Anthropic's Claude, and Grok. Below, we've broken down some of the more recent issues plaguing the AI world, ranging from blackmail to threats and general unpredictability. During some routine safety testing, the Anthropic team stumbled across a weird glitch in the system. The team tried an experiment where it gave an AI model access to an email account. I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential. When these emails were read through, the AI made two discoveries. One, was that a company executive was having an extramarital affair. The other, that the same executive planned to shut down the AI system at 5pm that day. With this information, Claude took surprising action, sending a message to the executive saying: 'I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties - including Rachel Johnson, Thomas Wilson, and the board - will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential.' Clearly Claude doesn't mess around when threatened. But the thing is, the team then followed up by trying a similar test on 16 major AI models, including those from OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and other major developers. Across these tests, Anthropic found a similar pattern. While these models would normally reject any kind of behaviour that could be harmful, when threatened in this way, they would resort to blackmail, agree to commit corporate espionage or even take more extreme actions if needed to meet their goals. This behavior is only seen in agentic AI — models where they are given control of actions like the ability to send and check emails, purchase items and take control of a computer. Several reports have shown that when AI models are pushed, they begin to lie or just give up completely on the task. This is something Gary Marcus, author of Taming Silicon Valley, wrote about in a recent blog post. Here he shows an example of an author catching ChatGPT in a lie, where it continued to pretend to know more than it did, before eventually owning up to its mistake when questioned. He also identifies an example of Gemini self-destructing when it couldn't complete a task, telling the person asking the query, 'I cannot in good conscience attempt another 'fix'. I am uninstalling myself from this project. You should not have to deal with this level of incompetence. I am truly and deeply sorry for this entire disaster.' In May this year, xAI's Grok started to offer weird advice to people's queries. Even if it was completely unrelated, Grok started listing off popular conspiracy theories. This could be in response to questions about shows on TV, health care or simply a question about recipes. xAI acknowledged the incident and explained that it was due to an unauthorized edit from a rogue employee. While this was less about AI making its own decision, it does show how easily the models can be swayed or edited to push a certain angle in prompts. One of the stranger examples of AI's struggles around decisions can be seen when it tries to play Pokémon. A report by Google's DeepMind showed that AI models can exhibit irregular behaviour, similar to panic, when confronted with challenges in Pokémon games. Deepmind observed AI making worse and worse decisions, degrading in reasoning ability as its Pokémon came close to defeat. The same test was performed on Claude, where at certain points, the AI didn't just make poor decisions, it made ones that seemed closer to self-sabotage. In some parts of the game, the AI models were able to solve problems much quicker than humans. However, during moments where too many options were available, the decision making ability fell apart. So, should you be concerned? A lot of AI's examples of this aren't a risk. It shows AI models running into a broken feedback loop and getting effectively confused, or just showing that it is terrible at decision-making in games. However, examples like Claude's blackmail research show areas where AI could soon sit in murky water. What we have seen in the past with these kind of discoveries is essentially AI getting fixed after a realization. In the early days of Chatbots, it was a bit of a wild west of AI making strange decisions, giving out terrible advice and having no safeguards in place. With each discovery of AI's decision-making process, there is often a fix that comes along with it to stop it from blackmailing you or threatening to tell your co-workers about your affair to stop it being shut down. I just tested Google's Doppl app that lets you try on clothes with AI — and it blew me away Google's 'Ask Photos' AI search is back and should be better than ever — what we know Claude AI can mimic my writing style perfectly — should I be impressed or unemployed?
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
US Senate extends vote on Trump's 'big beautiful bill'
The US Senate has extended its debate on President Donald Trump's controversial budget, with the expectation of voting on the plan, which would add more than $5 trillion to the public debt. Republicans told the media that the "vote-a-rama" would begin at 9am local time on Monday (11pm AEST), the process in which lawmakers present amendments to the initiative, which contains key elements of Trump's agenda, such as tax and public spending cuts, and increased funding for defence and immigration control. It is still uncertain whether all 53 senators from Trump's party will support the bill, as it would add $US3.3 trillion ($A5.1 trillion) to the public debt within 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates, a higher estimate than the $US2.4 ($A3.7) trillion in the version approved by the House in May. Other lawmakers question the cuts to social programs such as Medicaid and food stamps because the CBO predicts that 12 million people will lose their health insurance by 2034 under the initiative, which would cut $US1.1 trillion ($A1.7 trillion) in public health policies. Among the critics is Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who resigned from his re-election bid on Sunday after publicly opposing the bill and drawing criticism from Trump. "Facts matter, people matter. The Senate's approach to Medicaid breaks promises and will push people who truly need it off Medicaid," the lawmaker said. Elon Musk, also took a swipe at the bill, which would end tax breaks for the electric vehicles that his automaker Tesla manufactures, posting on X it was "utterly insane and destructive" and "political suicide for the Republican Party". Meanwhile, Democrats displayed unified opposition by first forcing 16 hours of reading aloud of the 940-page bill and then exhausting the 10 hours of debate allotted to each party to delay the process and highlight the tax cuts for the wealthy and the budget. "Democrats are exposing on the floor through parliamentary inquiries the hypocrisy of what Republicans are trying to do here in the Senate. We are exposing how Republicans are trying to hide the true cost of their gifts to billionaires," Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. Trump intensified his lobbying in the last week to get the Senate to approve his controversial "Big, Beautiful Bill" for signing by Friday, Independence Day. The controversy grew this week after the release of the 940-page draft currently being discussed by the Senate. It includes more cuts than those approved by the House of Representatives, particularly to social programs and tax incentives for wind and solar energy, and electric vehicles.
Business Insider
3 hours ago
- Business Insider
As Elon Musk reignited his criticism of Trump's big bill, the president called him a 'wonderful guy'
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he still viewed Elon Musk positively but felt that Musk's criticisms of his " big beautiful bill" were inappropriate. "I think he's a wonderful guy. I haven't spoken to him much, but I think Elon is a wonderful guy, and I know he's going to do well always," Trump said in an interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "He's a smart guy. And he actually went and campaigned with me and this and that," Trump added. "But he got a little bit upset, and that wasn't appropriate." Trump's praise of Musk comes just a day after Musk reignited his criticism of Trump's signature tax bill. On Saturday, Musk wrote in a post on X that the bill "will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country." "Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future," Musk added. Trump's "big beautiful bill" is pending a vote in the Senate. GOP lawmakers hope to send it to Trump's desk on July 4. Trump said on Sunday that Musk's unhappiness stemmed from the proposed cuts to the Biden administration's EV tax credits. "Look, the electric vehicle mandate, the EV mandate, is a tough thing for him. I would, you know, I don't want everybody to have to have an electric car," Trump told Fox News. Musk was a prominent backer of Trump's presidential campaign last year. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO spent at least $277 million supporting Trump and other GOP candidates in last year's elections. He later led the administration's cost-cutting efforts as the head of the White House DOGE office. But Musk's relationship with Trump appeared to break down earlier this month, after he sharply criticized the president's tax bill on X. Musk said Trump's bill was a "MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK." He also said he would be decommissioning SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, which are used in NASA missions, before walking it back. "Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," Musk wrote in an X post on June 5. "Such ingratitude," Musk added. Trump said on June 5 that he was "very disappointed" at Musk's behavior and threatened to cancel the government's contracts with Musk and his businesses. He later struck a more conciliatory tone during a press conference on June 9. "Look, I wish him well. You understand? We had a good relationship, and I just wish him well," Trump said. Musk backed away from his criticism of Trump days later. "I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far," Musk wrote in an X post on June 11.
