AI tool solves 10-year-old math problem without human help
13 Apr 2026

A Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) system has independently solved a mathematical problem that had remained unsolved for over a decade.

The breakthrough was achieved by a team from Peking University, who developed the dual-agent framework.

The problem was originally posed in 2014 by Dan Anderson, a professor at the University of Iowa who passed away in 2022.

AI tackled Anderson's conjecture
Innovative strategy

The Chinese team's AI framework tackled Anderson's conjecture by combining decades of mathematical literature with natural language reasoning and formal machine verification.

The researchers explained in their preprint paper that they were able to solve an open problem in commutative algebra, and automatically formalize the proof with almost no human intervention.

The methodology was posted on arXiv, an open-access online research repository.

AI framework outperformed human mathematicians
Speed advantage

The Chinese AI framework was able to do mathematical work faster than human mathematicians.

It even performed tasks that would usually require collaboration between experts from different fields.

The researchers stressed this achievement shows how much mathematical research can be automated with the help of AI, despite their paper not being peer-reviewed yet.