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OpenAI claimed a math breakthrough this weekend, only to be smacked down

The embarrassing episode sprouted from a misunderstood post, amplified by an OpenAI executive as proof of GPT-5’s mathematical prowess, but turned out not to be what it seemed.

Jon Keegan

10/20/25 11:40AM

In an embarrassing episode this weekend, OpenAI was forced to walk back a claim of a major math breakthrough. Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s VP of science, posted on X that “GPT-5 just found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdős problems, and made progress on 11 others. These have all been open for decades.”

What do you think “found solutions” means? It sure sounds like they are saying GPT-5 solved these problems!

But shortly after posting this, Thomas Bloom, who runs ErdosProblems.com, disputed the claim. Bloom’s website contains a database of 1,103 of Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős’ challenging problems and references to their solutions that have been found in academic research papers. Bloom called OpenAI’s announcement “a dramatic misrepresentation,” and said that GPT-5 found merely references to solutions for 10 problems that were previously published.

The competition is extremely intense among top AI companies to achieve computing breakthroughs that might indicate the eternally imminent arrival of AGI, so a post like this from such a high-ranking executive caught the industry’s attention.

After being called out for the incorrect claim, Weil acknowledged the error, saying he misunderstood the post in which researcher Mark Sellke detailed the Erdős problems listed as open that GPT-5 had found published solutions for. Weil deleted the original post, but not before other top AI researchers from OpenAI’s rival’s weighed in.

Alphabet’s GoogleMind cofounder and Nobel Prize winner Demis Hassabis wrote, “this is embarrassing.”

Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, a pioneer in neural networks, dropped the mic with this post:

Hoisted by their own GPTards
— Yann LeCun (@ylecun) October 18, 2025

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

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