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A row of small index cards laid left to right across a mathematician's desk in generational sequence, one new card caught mid-slide into the row as an older card is being nudged toward a discard tray at the desk's edge

FunSearch Found New Mathematics Without Ever Understanding the Problem

DeepMind's system pushed a 1994 combinatorics record from 496 to 512. The result is real and checkable. What found it never represented the problem — and the paper's own ablation shows what removing the language model costs a search that has to do without it.

By Brecht Corbeel · September 22, 2026 · 17 min read

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