Most journalists will say they’re not good at mathematics, or, as our U.K. friends put it, “the maths.” In high school I went to the state scholastic fair to compete in calculus, an experience that disabused me of several notions about my intellectual abilities, beginning with the idea that I knew anything about calculus.

I also competed in French, a language I seem to have studied forever without acquiring the ability to conduct a basic conversation. I can read it reasonably well, provided nobody expects me to pronounce anything or answer a question.

Still, I’ve been to Paris and am not afraid of numbers. I retain a certain affection for the elegance of mathematics. But the scholastic fair introduced me to students who revealed how much I had to learn.

 Recently I read a column by British mathematician Hannah Fry in New Scientist about the distress artificial intelligence is causing among her colleagues. Fry, whose doctoral work involved the Navier-Stokes equations (I don’t know what those are), reports that OpenAI has deployed thousands of AI agents to attack mathematical problems that have resisted human solution for generations. One reported result involves those equations, which describe the movement of fluids (I can use Google) and contain an unresolved question about whether certain mathematical solutions can break down.

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