AI’s latest challenge: the math olympics

For four years, computer scientist Trieu Trinh has been consumed with something of a meta-math problem: how to build an AI model that solves geometry problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad, the annual competition for the world’s most mathematically attuned high-school students.

Last week, Trinh successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on this topic at New York University; this week, he described the result of his labors in the journal Nature. Named AlphaGeometry, the system solves Olympiad geometry problems at nearly the level of a human gold medalist.