Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI have announced that their artificial-intelligence (AI) models won gold medals at a global mathematics competition, signaling a breakthrough in math capabilities in the race to build systems that can rival human intelligence.
These results mark the first time that AI systems have crossed the gold medal scoring threshold at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) for high-school students.
Both companies’ models successfully solved five out of six problems. This achievement was made using general-purpose “reasoning” models that processed mathematical concepts using natural language, a significant departure from previous approaches employed by AI firms.
While Google DeepMind collaborated with the IMO to have their models graded and certified by the committee, OpenAI did not officially enter the competition. However, the startup revealed on Saturday that its models achieved a gold medal-worthy score on this year’s questions, citing grades verified by three external IMO medalists.
According to Junehyuk Jung, a math professor at Brown University and visiting researcher in Google’s DeepMind AI unit, this accomplishment suggests that AI is less than a year away from being used by mathematicians to crack unsolved research problems at the forefront of the field.
“I think the moment we can solve hard reasoning problems in natural language will enable the potential for collaboration between AI and mathematicians,” Jung told Reuters.
OpenAI’s breakthrough was achieved with a new experimental model focused on massively scaling up “test-time compute.” This involved allowing the model to “think” for longer periods and deploying parallel computing power to run numerous lines of reasoning simultaneously, according to Noam Brown, a researcher at OpenAI. Brown declined to disclose the exact cost of this computing power for OpenAI but described it as “very expensive.”
For OpenAI researchers, this is another clear indication that AI models can command extensive reasoning capabilities that could expand into other areas beyond mathematics.
This optimism is shared by Google researchers, who believe AI models’ capabilities can apply to research challenges in other fields such as physics, said Jung, who won an IMO gold medal as a student in 2003.
Out of the 630 students participating in the 66th IMO on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, 67 contestants, or approximately 11%, achieved gold-medal scores.
Google’s DeepMind AI unit had previously achieved a silver medal score last year using AI systems specialized for mathematics. This year, Google employed a general-purpose model called Gemini Deep Think, a version of which was unveiled at its annual developer conference in May.
Unlike previous AI attempts that relied on formal languages and lengthy computation, Google’s approach this year operated entirely in natural language and solved the problems within the official 4.5-hour time limit, the company stated in a blog post.
OpenAI, which has its own set of reasoning models, similarly built an experimental version for the competition, according to a post by researcher Alexander Wei on social media platform X. He noted that the company does not plan to release anything with this level of math capability for several months.
This year marked the first time the competition officially coordinated with some AI developers, who have for years used prominent math competitions like IMO to test model capabilities. IMO judges certified the results of those companies, including Google, and asked them to publish results on July 28.
“We respected the IMO Board’s original request that all AI labs share their results only after the official results had been verified by independent experts and the students had rightly received the acclamation they deserved,” Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said on X on Monday.
OpenAI, which published its results on Saturday and first claimed gold-medal status, stated in an interview that it had permission from an IMO board member to do so after the closing ceremony on Saturday.
The competition on Monday allowed cooperating companies to publish results, Gregor Dolinar, president of IMO’s board, told Reuters.
