📝 TL;DR A 23-year-old with no advanced math training used GPT-5.4 Pro to help solve an Erdős problem that had been open for 60 years. The wild part is not just that it got solved, it is that the breakthrough came from letting AI brainstorm freely instead of forcing it into the usual expert playbook. 🧠 Overview Liam Price, a young math enthusiast rather than a professional mathematician, helped crack Erdős Problem #1196 using GPT-5.4 Pro. The solution was later confirmed by leading mathematicians, including Terence Tao, and the result is now listed as solved. This matters because it suggests AI may be most powerful not when it imitates expert thinking, but when it helps people escape it. 📜 The Announcement The story gained attention after Scientific American reported that Price used GPT-5.4 Pro to explore the problem in a loose, idea-first way, what people are now calling vibe maths. Instead of starting with rigid formal structures, he let the model suggest unconventional directions and then filtered the useful ones. The problem had been open for decades, and the approach GPT-5.4 Pro surfaced appears to have broken out of a pattern that had kept human researchers stuck. ⚙️ How It Works • Idea-first prompting - Price reportedly let the model generate broad approaches first instead of boxing it into strict formulations too early. • Human filtering - The AI did not replace judgment, it produced possibilities and Price filtered what seemed promising. • Unconventional route - The method used was not the standard framework experts had been reaching for on this class of problem. • Expert verification - Leading mathematicians, including Terence Tao, reviewed the result and confirmed the solution. • Public proof trail - The solution was posted through the Erdős Problems site, where the problem is now marked solved. • Fast exploration loop - The workflow shows how AI can compress the brainstorming stage of difficult research dramatically.