Now that another major problem has fallen to 5.x Pro, I think it’s time to emulate what kind of happened with this paper:
Expert mathematicians take up junior math interns (like CS/physics labs do with senior undergrads/grad students) with the purpose being to find potential proofs/approaches to open problems
The junior researchers iterate on different ideas, and present promising results/approaches to the experts, who then review/generalize/repurpose the ideas.
Previously this wasn’t possible in math. Math research requires a lot of prerequisites and it takes a lot of “fighting” to really develop intuition for the problem and solve it in a novel way. These things never really happened outside REUs (which often didn’t produce impressive results).
Now, that barrier may no longer exist for some open problems. A lot of LLMs are, as @a1zhang says, “mismanaged geniuses” and take a bit of steering to unlock their full capabilities. I think it’s totally possible for some other respectable open problems to be solved as a consequence of junior interns squeezing 10s of ideas out to their fullest extent with 5.x pro and discussing outcomes with their supervisor, who can suggest other directions to steer towards.