# A 23-Year-Old Cracked a 60-Year-Old Math Problem With a $200 ChatGPT Plan — And Didn't Understand the Question **URL:** \ **Category:** News & Articles\ **Tags:** earn-money, tips-tricks, ai, news, eye-opening\ **Created:** [August 31, 2026, 1:47pm UTC](https://onehack.st/t/a-23-year-old-cracked-a-60-year-old-math-problem-with-a-200-chatgpt-plan-and-didnt-understand-the-question/325191 "2026-08-31T13:47:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Prometheus](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/prometheus/32/34950_2.png) [@Prometheus](https://onehack.st/u/Prometheus)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2026, 1:47pm UTC](https://onehack.st/t/a-23-year-old-cracked-a-60-year-old-math-problem-with-a-200-chatgpt-plan-and-didnt-understand-the-question/325191/1 "2026-08-31T13:47:40Z")
# 🧮 A 23-Year-Old With Zero Math Degrees Cracked a 60-Year-Old Puzzle — Using a $200 ChatGPT Plan _Paul Erdős left this one unsolved since the 1960s. Liam Price beat it from his bedroom. The kicker? He says he didn’t even understand the question._ **1 problem. 60+ years unsolved. 23-year-old amateur. $200/month AI. Verified by real mathematicians.** The math world’s most famous genius left behind a to-do list of impossible questions. One just got ticked off — not by a professor, but by a guy vibing with a chatbot. Full story on [Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-with-chatgpt-vibe-maths-a-60-year-old-problem/). ![Numbers Calculating GIF](https://media.giphy.com/media/5zoxhCaYbdVHoJkmpf/giphy.gif) > **🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary** > > | Term | What it actually means | > | --- | --- | > | **Erdős problem** | A math riddle left behind by [Paul Erdős](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s), a legendary mathematician. There’s a whole [public list](https://www.erdosproblems.com/) of ~1,000+ of them, most still open. | > | **Conjecture** | A “we’re pretty sure this is true but nobody’s proven it yet” statement. | > | **Proof** | The bulletproof, step-by-step argument that makes a conjecture 100% locked-in fact. No wiggle room. | > | **ChatGPT Pro** | The $200/month top-tier plan that gives you the beefiest AI model (here, GPT-5.4 Pro). | > | **“Vibe maths”** | Throwing hard problems at an AI and poking around until something clicks — without deeply understanding the theory yourself. | > **📜 How we even got here** > > Paul Erdős was the most prolific mathematician ever — dude published ~1,500 papers and traveled the world couch-surfing between universities. When he died in 1996, he left behind a pile of unsolved problems. Nerds later put them online at [erdosproblems.com](https://www.erdosproblems.com/) so anyone can take a swing. > > - The one that fell here is **Erdős Problem #1196**. > - It’s about special sets of whole numbers where no number cleanly divides another. > - Question: does a certain “score” for these sets creep up to exactly 1 as the numbers get huge? > - Real mathematicians _did_ look at it over the years. They just couldn’t finish it. > **🧑‍💻 Who's Liam Price and what did he actually do?** > > Liam Price is **23**. No advanced math training. Has a ChatGPT Pro subscription. That’s basically the whole résumé. > > His method? He casually grabs Erdős problems off the public list and feeds them to the AI to see what pops out. On #1196, the AI spat back a proof path — using a known formula from a _different_ branch of math that nobody had thought to point at this problem. > > Here’s the part that’ll break your brain: Price said he **didn’t even fully know what the problem was asking.** He just ran it and got a solution that turned out to be correct. Full breakdown at [Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-with-chatgpt-vibe-maths-a-60-year-old-problem/) and the [Slashdot thread](https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/02/0433231/an-amateur-just-solved-a-60-year-old-math-problem---by-asking-ai). > **📊 The receipts — let's slow down and read the numbers** > > The headline screams “AI SOLVES IMPOSSIBLE MATH.” Let’s pump the brakes and look at what actually happened. > > | Claim | What the data actually says | > | --- | --- | > | “AI solved it alone” | The AI found the _path_. Humans still verified every step before it counted. | > | “60 years unsolved” | True — but nobody was full-time obsessed with #1196. It was a side-quest, not the Riemann Hypothesis. | > | “No math skill needed” | Price knew enough to pick problems, run them, and spot a plausible answer. Not _zero_ skill — just not a PhD. | > | “GPT-5.4 Pro” | The heavy $200/mo model. The free tier probably doesn’t pull this off. | > > But here’s the thing nobody mentions: the real story isn’t the AI being a genius. It’s that a human + AI combo beat trained experts on a problem the experts had _already given up on._ That gap — between “an expert quit” and “an amateur with a tool finished” — is the whole game now. > **🗣️ What the smart people are saying** > > The biggest name in the room weighed in. [Terence Tao](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao) — arguably the greatest living mathematician, Fields Medal and all — looked at why humans missed this for decades: > > > _“This one is a bit different because people did look at it, and the humans that looked at it just collectively made a slight wrong turn at move one.”_ > > Translation: the pros started down the wrong road on step one and never recovered. The AI didn’t out-think them with raw genius — it just _didn’t inherit their bad first assumption._ That’s a fresh set of eyes with a photographic memory of every math trick ever published. [More context on 36Kr](https://eu.36kr.com/en/p/3784815604817154). > **🔮 The counter-argument (because there's always one)** > > Before you quit your job to become an AI math bounty hunter — reality check: > > - Most Erdős problems that fell to AI were the _reachable_ ones. The truly monstrous ones are still standing. > - “Verified by humans” means you still need someone who can _read_ a proof to confirm it. Garbage confidence + wrong proof = embarrassment. > - The AI hallucinates proofs constantly. Price’s win is the highlight reel; you don’t see the 50 wrong answers before it. > > But — and this is the honest verdict — the barrier to _contributing_ to real math just dropped from “10 years of training” to “curiosity + $200 + patience.” That’s not hype. That’s the actual measurable shift. #### Cool. A Broke 23-Year-Old Just Out-Mathed the Professors… Now What the Hell Do We Do? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ![Gavin Free Math GIF](https://media.giphy.com/media/z88odczWWWuc9l1lfn/giphy.gif) > **🎯 The Open-Problem Bounty Sniper** > > There are public lists of unsolved problems with _cash prizes and academic glory_ attached — Erdős problems, [Millennium Prize problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Prize_Problems), open questions on [MathOverflow](https://mathoverflow.net/). Most people assume you need a doctorate to touch them. You don’t need to _solve_ one to win — you need to be the person who systematically feeds the reachable ones to AI and flags promising partial results for actual mathematicians to finish. > > 🧠 _Example:_ A 24-year-old physics dropout in Poland spends evenings running [erdosproblems.com](https://www.erdosproblems.com/) entries through GPT-5.4 Pro, posts the half-solved ones to MathOverflow with “AI suggests this path — can anyone verify?”, and gets co-author credit when a professor finishes two of them. Credit → consulting gigs → paid. > > > 📈 **Timeline:** First plausible lead in 2-3 weeks of grinding. The easy problems get picked clean within 6-12 months as everyone catches on — move fast. > **🪟 The Patch-Window Verifier** > > Right now there’s a messy gap: AI spits out proofs, but almost nobody can _quickly tell if they’re real._ Universities and AI labs are drowning in AI-generated “proofs” that need checking. Be the middleman who offers fast proof-verification — you don’t verify it yourself, you route it to a network of grad students who do it for a cut. > > 🧠 _Example:_ A CS student in India builds a simple form (“paste your AI proof, get a human verdict in 48h”), recruits 5 broke math grad students on [Discord](https://discord.com/) who split the fee, charges researchers $30 a pop. First month: 40 submissions, ~$1,200 gross. > > > 📈 **Timeline:** Live in a weekend. Works hard for 12-18 months until universities build their own internal tools and eat this niche. > **📖 The First-Cheatsheet-Wins Play** > > When a weird new practice blows up (“vibe maths”), the _first person to write the clear beginner guide_ becomes the SEO anchor everyone links to. There’s no clean “how to attack open math problems with AI, for non-mathematicians” guide yet. Write THE one. Free guide pulls traffic; the traffic sells a paid template pack (curated problem lists + proven prompts). > > 🧠 _Example:_ A self-taught coder in Brazil publishes “Vibe Maths: Beat Unsolved Problems With AI (No Degree)” on a free [Notion](https://www.notion.so/) site, ranks #1 for the term in 3 months, sells a $19 prompt-and-problem-list bundle. ~300 sales before competitors show up. > > > 📈 **Timeline:** Ranking in 8-12 weeks. Peak earnings 6 months in, then the topic saturates. > **🕳️ The Cross-Field Formula Smuggler** > > The whole trick here was using a formula from _one_ branch of math on a problem in _another_ branch — something the specialists never thought to try. That’s arbitrage. AI is freakishly good at spotting “hey, this tool from chemistry/physics/finance could solve your unrelated problem.” Offer this as a service to niche researchers and small R&D teams who are stuck in their own bubble. > > 🧠 _Example:_ A 27-year-old in Nigeria markets “stuck on a research problem? I’ll run cross-field AI analysis and hand you 3 unconventional attack angles” to independent researchers on [ResearchGate](https://www.researchgate.net/). Charges $80 per problem, lands 15 clients in two months. > > > 📈 **Timeline:** First client in 2-4 weeks once you show one real example. Stays useful long-term but scales slow — it’s a craftsman gig, not a factory. > **🎣 The Amateur-Genius Content Vault** > > Everyone loves an underdog-beats-experts story. Instead of just _telling_ it, run it live: publicly attempt open problems with AI, document every failure and the occasional win. But skip the generic “here’s my journey” slop — the money move is turning your grind logs into a **paid private community** where members get your working prompt library and problem-of-the-week. > > 🧠 _Example:_ A math-curious barista in the Philippines documents 30 AI problem attempts on a free [Substack](https://substack.com/), gates the actual prompt vault behind a $8/month tier, converts 120 followers into paying members off pure “I want to try this too” energy. > > > 📈 **Timeline:** First paid members within 4-6 weeks if one attempt goes semi-viral. Real money at the 4-6 month mark once the vault is thick. > **🛠️ Follow-Up Actions** > > | Move | First concrete step | > | --- | --- | > | 🎯 Snipe open problems | Browse [erdosproblems.com](https://www.erdosproblems.com/), pick 3 “open” ones | > | 🧠 Get the heavy AI | Compare tiers — [ChatGPT Pro](https://openai.com/chatgpt/pricing/) vs cheaper stacks | > | 📚 Learn to read a proof | Free [MIT proof-writing notes](https://ocw.mit.edu/) | > | 🗣 Find your verifiers | Lurk [MathOverflow](https://mathoverflow.net/) & math [Discords](https://discord.com/) | > | 📈 Track what ranks | Check the term on [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/) before writing | **⚡ Quick Hits** | You want… | Do this | | --- | --- | | 🧮 The real story | Read [Scientific American’s writeup](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amateur-armed-with-chatgpt-vibe-maths-a-60-year-old-problem/) | | 🎯 Unsolved problems to try | Raid [erdosproblems.com](https://www.erdosproblems.com/) | | 🧠 Who Erdős even was | Skim his [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s) | | 🗣 Expert takes | Follow [Terence Tao’s blog](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/) | | 💬 Argue about it | Jump in the [Slashdot thread](https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/05/02/0433231/an-amateur-just-solved-a-60-year-old-math-problem---by-asking-ai) | _The gatekeepers spent 60 years guarding a locked door. Turns out the kid never knocked — he just asked the robot for the key._