Tao, Gómez-Serrano, Georgiev and Wagner test AlphaEvolve on 67 maths problems
Result confirmed
The takeaway
In ‘Mathematical exploration and discovery at scale’ (arXiv 2511.02864), Bogdan Georgiev, Javier Gómez-Serrano, Terence Tao and Adam Zsolt Wagner ran AlphaEvolve on 67 problems in analysis, combinatorics, geometry and number theory.
Status
- Claim
Result confirmed
- Our reporting
- High confidence
- Verification
- Preprint only
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 19 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 AstraIn its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5In its training data
- Gemini 4 HydrogenIn its training data
- Grok 4.7In its training data
It happened before the cutoffs of all four assistants, so it can be in their training data.
Key facts
- 67 problems; a public repository with per-problem notebooks
- Rediscovered state-of-the-art constructions in most cases and improved on several
- Pipeline: AlphaEvolve (constructions) → Deep Think (informal proof) → AlphaProof (formal proof) in some cases
- Tao blog post, 5 Nov 2025
What happened
Leading mathematicians stress-tested AlphaEvolve on a large, varied problem set and published both the successes and the failures.
Why it matters
Coming from Tao, it gave the maths community a credible, balanced picture of what AI search could do, just before the 2026 surge.
Sources
3 sources from 3 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
3 sources: 2 primary, 1 reaction
Primary
- Mathematical exploration and discovery at scale (arXiv 2511.02864)arxiv.org, paper
- GitHub: alphaevolve_repository_of_problemsgithub.com, code
Reactions
- Terence Tao: Mathematical exploration and discovery at scaleterrytao.wordpress.com, discussion
Changes
- Verification made precise
- Filed