Two Independent Proofs of the Same Crypto Problem Show How AI Is Transforming Science

Two researchers independently solved the same open problem in quantum cryptography almost simultaneously using OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Ultra. The MIT PhD student Seyoon Ragavan and professors Prabhanjan Ananth (UC Santa Barbara) and Amit Sahai (UCLA) submitted their papers to arXiv.org just three hours apart. The case raises fundamental questions about scientific credit and the meaning of independent discovery when everyone uses the same AI model.

OpenAI

GPT-5.6 helps disprove the Maxwell conjecture — but not the one everyone thought

A preprint on arXiv claims to refute the so-called Maxwell conjecture about the maximum number of equilibrium points for point charges, with the key idea attributed to OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model. The conjecture, formulated in 2007, concerned a bound of (n−1)² non-degenerate equilibrium points for n charges. The counterexample uses a configuration of five charges yielding at least 24 equilibrium points, exceeding the predicted 16.

OpenAI