alt Hacker NewsJust two days ago, a preprint by Julia Stadlmann went up on arXiv [0] improving the prime gap from 246 to 240. Now OpenAI announces Astra has shown a gap of 186 [1]. That must really blow.
[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.31126
[1] https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/51126fac-1b68-4128-9666-c908bcc16...
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I think this builds straight upon her method, which she said could be improved herself so...
With very little review: https://github.com/openai/PrimeGaps186/blob/main/formalizati...
"No independent human semantic review. Whole-file sorry counts and a complete auxiliary-declaration audit are not established; separate declaration lint has not been run."
Ok, so the rumour was exactly true: there was a withheld prime gaps improvement, that "an AI company" was holding onto until release of a model.
Where did you get the link to the pdf? Was it announced somewhere?
Such a result should be considered worthless: the proof is 10MB of Lean. (https://github.com/openai/PrimeGaps186).
I can't think of a single mathematical proof being anywhere close to ten million characters. For all you know, 90% of the proof could be useless, 8% would be writing out Shakespeare, and 1% abusing another bug in Lean. Humanity gets zero value from that, aside from "some bot seems to think it's 186". Unusable by anyone.
Happened to multiple people I know.
Based on her comments in the paper it sounds like she was aware that an AI result was coming and rushed to release her work beforehand. 240 was not a tight bound from her methods.