An AI from Google DeepMind has achieved a silver medal score at this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), the first time any AI has made it to the podium.

The IMO is considered the world’s most prestigious competition for young mathematicians. Correctly answering its test questions requires mathematical ability that AI systems typically lack.

In January, Google DeepMind demonstrated AlphaGeometry, an AI system that could answer some IMO geometry questions as well as humans. However, this was not from a live competition, and it couldn’t answer questions from other mathematical disciplines, such as number theory, algebra and combinatorics, which is necessary to win an IMO medal.

Google DeepMind has now released a new AI, called AlphaProof, which can solve a wider range of mathematical problems, and an improved version of AlphaGeometry, which can solve more geometry questions.

When the team tested both systems together on this year’s IMO questions, they answered four out of six questions correctly, giving them a score of 28 out of a possible 42 points. This was enough to win a silver medal and just one point under this year’s gold medal threshold.

At the contest in Bath, UK, last week, 58 entrants won a gold medal and 123 won a silver medal.

“We are all very much aware that AI will eventually be better than humans at solving most mathematical problems, but the rate at which AI is improving is breathtaking,” says Gregor Dolinar, the IMO president. “Missing the gold medal at IMO 2024 by just one point a few days ago is truly impressive.”

At a press conference, Timothy Gowers at the University of Cambridge, who helped mark AlphaProof’s answers, said the AI’s performance was surprising and it appeared to find “magic keys” to answer problems in a similar way to humans. “I thought that these magic keys would probably be a little bit beyond what it could do, so it came as quite a surprise in one or two instances when the program had indeed found these keys,” said Gowers.

AlphaProof works similarly to Google DeepMind’s previous AIs that can beat the best humans at chess and Go. All of these AIs rely on a trial-and-error approach called reinforcement learning,  where the system finds its own way to solve a problem over many attempts. However, this method requires a large set of problems written in language that the AI can understand and verify, whereas most IMO-like problems are written in English.

To get around this, Thomas Hubert at DeepMind and his colleagues used Google’s Gemini AI, a language model like the one that powers ChatGPT, to translate these problems into a programming language called Lean so that the AI could learn how to solve them.

“At the beginning, it will be able to solve perhaps the simplest problems, and learn from solving those simpler problems to attack harder and harder problems,” Hubert said at the press conference. It also produces its answers in Lean, so they can be instantly verified as correct.

While AlphaProof’s performance is impressive, it works slowly, taking up to three days to find some solutions instead of the 4.5 hours per three questions that competitors are allowed. It also failed to answer both questions on combinatorics, which is the study of counting and arranging numbers. “We are still working to understand why this is, which will hopefully lead us to improve the system,” says Alex Davies at Google DeepMind.

It is also not clear how AlphaProof arrives at its answers or whether it uses the same kind of mathematical intuitions that humans do, said Gowers, but its ability to translate proofs from Lean into English makes it easy to check they are correct.

The result is impressive and a significant milestone, says Geordie Williamson at the University of Sydney, Australia. “There have been many previous attempts to do reinforcement learning on formal proofs and none have had much success.”

While a system like AlphaProof could be useful for working mathematicians in helping develop proofs, it obviously can’t help with identifying problems to solve and work on, which takes up a large portion of researchers’ time, says Yang-Hui He at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

Hubert said his team hopes that AlphaProof will be able to help improve Google’s large language models, like Gemini, by reducing incorrect responses.

The trading company XTX Markets has offered a $5 million prize – called the AI Mathematical Olympiad – for an AI capable of achieving a gold medal at the IMO, but AlphaProof is not eligible because it is not publicly available. “We hope that DeepMind’s advances will inspire more teams to enter the AIMO Prize, and would of course welcome a public entry from DeepMind themselves,” says Alex Gerko at XTX Markets.

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website

TikTok is one of the most popular and widely used apps in the world. You’d think the company would be able to translate that success to other derivative services given its extensive user base. However, TikTok Music, ByteDance’s attempt at music streaming, will shut down soon.

TikTok’s short video format is not only great for consuming useful and fun content but also for discovering music. Every so often, a song becomes popular among users of the platform. This can happen unexpectedly when a meme or something similar goes viral. So, it seemed quite logical for TikTok to try to get into the music streaming segment. It would be ideal if, after listening to part of a song in a TikTok video, you could listen to the full version on TikTok Music with a tap.

ByteDance will shut down TikTok Music on November 28; subscribers to get refunds

However, it takes more than just good ideas to make a project successful, and ByteDance has noticed. The music streaming industry is very competitive, so you have to offer a service at least on par with the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, or Tidal. It seems TikTok Music failed to make the grade, so ByteDance will be shutting it down on November 28th.

It’s noteworthy that TikTok Music never had a global rollout. The company was testing it in countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and Singapore. The “TikTok Music” trademark application in 2022 suggested that ByteDance planned to bring the service to the United States.

TikTok Music users whose subscriptions end after November 28th can receive a refund. On Android, the refund will be automatic, although you can also request it through Google Play. Users of Apple devices will have to request a refund through Apple support before the deadline. Plus, subscribers have until October 28 to transfer their playlists to other music streaming services.

Other music streaming platforms had a big advantage

TikTok Music had a tough time catching up with its rivals from the start. Today, services like YouTube Music, Spotify, and Apple Music each have over 100 million songs in their catalogs. Plus, each app offers extra features that make them stand out even more. For example, Spotify has been integrating AI to enable a DJ based on your personal tastes, as well as podcasts. Meanwhile, YouTube Music offers millions of original covers and remixes in addition to the official songs.

There are also services that offer HiFi plans, like Tidal or the long-awaited one for Apple Music. The latter even includes support for Spatial Audio in selected content for an immersive experience. Overall, ByteDance may have bet too little on TikTok Music.

There have been murmurings for some time that Pocketpair was planning to bring Palworld, one of the biggest games of the year, to PlayStation 5. However, it was a bit of a surprise to find out during Sony’s State of Play stream that the action-adventure game is available for the console today.

Palworld (which is often described as “Pokémon with guns”) landed on Xbox and PC in Early Access in January and was an immediate hit, selling over a million copies in just eight hours. Within a month, it had reached more than 25 million players. According to Microsoft, it had the biggest ever debut for a third-party title on Game Pass.

However, it quickly emerged that The Pokémon Company was investigating Palworld. Fast forward eight months, and the company and Nintendo filed suit against Pocketpair.

“This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights,” Nintendo said after filing the suit last week. Pocketpair’s CEO said the game “cleared legal reviews” and the studio said it would “begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.”

So it’s not exactly ideal timing for Palworld to land on PS5. But hey, if you’re willing to buy a game that could potentially be forced to shut down in a few months or years due to a lawsuit, you can now do that on your PlayStation.