'Proof by intimidation': AI is confidently solving 'impossible' math problems. But can it convince the world's top mathematicians?

A cartoon showing a series of figures carrying different dark blue numbers walking across a green and yellow circuit board. In the background, a human brain floats in the center of blue concentric circles with a circuit board pattern in the shape of the brain .

At a secret meeting in 2025, some of the world's leading mathematicians gathered to test OpenAI's newest large language model, o4-mini.

Experts at the meeting were amazed by how much the model's responses sounded like a real mathematician when delivering a complex proof.