Mathematics is the foundational language of the universe, providing the tools to explain all the things from the laws of physics to the intricacies of biology and the logic of computer science. For hundreds of years, its frontiers have been expanded by human ingenuity alone. At Google DeepMind, we consider AI can function a robust tool to collaborate with mathematicians, augmenting creativity and accelerating discovery.
Today, we’re introducing the AI for Math Initiative, supported by Google DeepMind and Google.org. It brings together five of the world’s most prestigious research institutions to pioneer the usage of AI in mathematical research.
The inaugural partner institutions are:
- Imperial College London
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES)
- Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (UC Berkeley)
- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)
The initiative’s partners will work towards the shared goals of identifying the subsequent generation of mathematical problems ripe for AI-driven insights, constructing the infrastructure and tools to power these advances and, ultimately, accelerating the pace of discovery.
Google’s support includes funding from Google.org and access to Google DeepMind’s state-of-the-art technologies, akin to an enhanced reasoning mode called Gemini Deep Think, our agent for algorithm discovery, AlphaEvolve, and our formal proof completion system, AlphaProof. The initiative will create a robust feedback loop between fundamental research and applied AI, opening the door to deeper partnerships.
A pivotal moment for AI and arithmetic
The AI for Math Initiative comes at a time of remarkable progress in AI’s reasoning capabilities; our own work has seen rapid advancement in recent months.
In 2024, our AlphaGeometry and AlphaProof systems achieved a silver-medal standard on the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). More recently, our latest Gemini model, equipped with Deep Think, achieved a gold-medal level performance at this 12 months’s IMO, perfectly solving five of the six problems and scoring 35 points.
And we’ve seen further progress with one other of our methods, AlphaEvolve, which was applied to over 50 open problems in mathematical evaluation, geometry, combinatorics and number theory and improved the previously best known solutions in 20% of them. In mathematics and algorithm discovery, it has invented a brand new, more efficient method for matrix multiplication — a core calculation in computing. For the particular problem of multiplying 4×4 matrices, AlphaEvolve discovered an algorithm using just 48 scalar multiplications, breaking the 50-year-old record set by Strassen’s algorithm in 1969. In computer science, it helped researchers discover latest mathematical structures that show certain complex problems are even harder for computers to resolve than we previously knew. This provides us a clearer and more precise understanding of computational limits, which is able to help guide future research.
This rapid progress is a testament to the fast-evolving capabilities of AI models. We hope this latest initiative can explore how AI can speed up discovery in mathematical research, and tackle harder problems.
We’re only firstly of understanding all the things AI can do, and the way it might help us think concerning the deepest questions in science. By combining the profound intuition of world-leading mathematicians with the novel capabilities of AI, we consider latest pathways of research might be opened, advancing human knowledge and moving toward latest breakthroughs across the scientific disciplines.
