Math Papers, Super Intelligence, and Other Super Things (with Aleck McCathie and Kent Gustavson)
An AI spent about three hours each on hundreds of open math problems, and now humans need to check its work.
We start with OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. On 6 October it posted more than 700 math papers from a model it hasn't released, and plenty of mathematicians are up in arms. We suspect some of it is breakthrough, not slop. It's mountaintop mining: take the top off and sift the muck, which only works on the right mountain.
Making content is nearly free. OpenAI cut prices on its cheaper models in late September, and this week Anthropic, which makes Claude, launched a small model it says is about 75% cheaper to run than its last one. The checking, and even the reading, is what costs.
Since 29 September, US federal agencies have been told to say super intelligence instead of artificial intelligence. By that logic, artificial meat like tofu is super meat, and stevia a super sweetener.
The second half gets into which AI earns which word: slop nobody thought about stays artificial, while medical research and math beyond human reach feel super. Researchers are working on computers made from grown human brain cells, a field called organoid intelligence. The super we'd accept is AI plugged into a person, like Batman, a man made super by his devices.
We end wondering what happens to everything behind a password, from bank accounts to nuclear launches, if AI can do math like this.
Chapters:
- (00:19) - Slop, our recurring guest
- (01:25) - Slop as an acronym
- (02:36) - OpenAI's 700 math papers
- (03:42) - Mountaintop mining
- (04:30) - Nobel Prizes and mirror molecules
- (05:17) - Free to make, costly to check
- (06:39) - From bootlegs to YouTube
- (08:02) - AI for free on Google
- (08:47) - Too big to fail
- (09:48) - Napster and nefarious corners
- (11:41) - Smart devices
- (12:05) - AI becomes super
- (13:18) - The official renaming
- (14:29) - What artificial means
- (15:01) - Artificial sweeteners
- (15:45) - Tofu as super meat
- (16:32) - Computers from brain cells
- (17:35) - It depends on the AI
- (19:12) - Artificial slop, super science
- (19:55) - Organoid intelligence
- (21:13) - Batman's devices
- (21:59) - Testing models on encryption
- (23:04) - Quantum and fusion
- (23:34) - Back to the primordial goo
- (24:42) - A world without passwords
Referenced in this episode:
Results on open math problems from an unreleased model (OpenAI) - https://openai.com/index/sharing-ai-progress-in-mathematics/
The repository of more than 700 math papers (OpenAI on GitHub) - https://github.com/openai/math
Mathematicians' uproar over the release (Nature) - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03196-8
The 2026 chemistry Nobel for mirror-image molecules (AP, in The Boston Globe) - https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/07/world/nobel-prize-chemistry/
Half-price GPT-6 Sol and Luna, 22 September (OpenAI) - https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-6-sol-and-luna/
Claude Haiku 5.5 and its lower running cost (Anthropic) - https://www.anthropic.com/claude-haiku-5-5
The executive order renaming AI super intelligence (The White House) - https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inaugurating-the-era-of-super-intelligence/
The paper that named organoid intelligence (Frontiers in Science) - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/science/articles/10.3389/fsci.2023.1017235
Connect with Aleck: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleck-m/
Man vs. Slop is a Podcasts That Matter production: https://podcaststhatmatter.org
