/AI7d ago

Mathematicians disprove the sum-product conjecture for real numbers using insights from OpenAI's unit distance conjecture counterexample

The discovery validates Timothy Gowers' prediction of human-AI math collaboration

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Another major problem, this time in additive combinatorics, has fallen, this time to humans rather than AI, but using methods related to the AI solution to the unit distance conjecture.

Mehtaab Sawhney@mehtaab_sawhney

A remarkable paper appeared on arXiv tonight by Thomas Bloom, Will Sawin, Carl Schildkraut and Dmitrii Zhelezov. In this paper, they prove that there exists c>0 and arbitrarily large finite sets A of real numbers such that max(|A+A|,|AA|)≤|A|^{2-c}. This disproves the well-known sum-product conjecture over the real numbers. The sum-product conjecture considers the two most basic operations: addition and multiplication. A+A is the set of all pairwise sums of two elements in A while AA is the set of all pairwise products of two elements in A. (1/5)

12:08 AM · May 28, 2026 · 648.7K Views
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Noam Brown@polynoamial

After AlphaGo, the skill of human Go players noticeably improved. I suspect we will see a similar pattern in math.

Another major problem, this time in additive combinatorics, has fallen, this time to humans rather than AI, but using methods related to the AI solution to the unit distance conjecture.

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