Why AIs that tackle complex maths could be the next big breakthrough

For Bill Gates, artificial intelligence is the most important invention since the internet or the personal computer. For Google boss Sundar Pichai, it will have a more profound impact than electricity and fire. Already, though, there are signs the AI revolution may be faltering. Since OpenAI released its landmark GPT-4 system in March 2023, new large language models like Google’s Gemini have offered only incremental improvements.

GPT-5 could change this tomorrow, of course. But progress can also come from unexpected places, like the esoteric world of pure mathematics.

Although maths provides the foundations on which AI systems are built,…