July 25 - Alphabet's Google unveiled a pair of

artificial intelligence systems on Thursday that demonstrated

advances in solving complex mathematical problems, a key

frontier of generative AI development.

The current class of AI models, which work by statistically

predicting the next word, have struggled with abstract math,

which requires greater reasoning capabilities resembling human

intelligence.

DeepMind, the company's AI unit, published results showing

that its new AI models in development, called AlphaProof and

AlphaGeometry 2, solved four out of six questions at the 2024

International Math Olympiad, a prominent competition for high

school students.

Google said in a blog post that one question was

solved within minutes, but others took up to three days, longer

than the competition's time limit. Still, the results represent

the best marks in the competition by an AI system to date.

The company said it created AlphaProof, a system focused on

reasoning, by combining a version of Gemini, the language model

behind its chatbot of the same name, with AlphaZero, another AI

system which previously bested humans in board games such as

chess and Go. AlphaProof solved three of the competition's

problems, including the most difficult question, which was

solved by just five out of more than 600 human contestants.

An additional math problem was solved by AlphaGeometry 2.

Reuters reported earlier in July that Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed

OpenAI was developing reasoning technology under the code name

"Strawberry." The project, formerly known as Q*, was considered

so much of a breakthrough that several staff researchers wrote a

letter to OpenAI's board of directors in November warning that

it could threaten humanity, as Reuters first reported.