OpenAI faces growing backlash from mathematicians

Twenty-five leading mathematicians have signed an open letter warning that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work as they compete to solve famous mathematical problems. Every signatory has received the Fields Medal, widely considered the most prestigious prize in mathematics.

NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster accused OpenAI of pressuring him not to credit a collaborator working for Anthropic. He also questioned whether OpenAI had used work created with Codex to produce its own proof during a marathon weekend of inference. The proof remains unverified.

OpenAI withdrew its sponsorship of a math event at CalTech after criticism from university researchers. The letter says AI-generated solutions will benefit humanity only if mathematicians can understand, communicate, and integrate them into the discipline. Its authors warned that rushed announcements can leave too little time for proper writeups, new methods, and credit for previous work, raising attribution and plagiarism concerns.

The letter also describes fears that the open-research culture could be weakened as frontier labs spend tens of millions of dollars using LLMs to reach proofs before the original researchers. It follows the Leiden Declaration, released by a mathematicians’ working group in June, which offered recommendations for mathematicians, institutions, and policymakers.