SYDNEY: Humans beat generative AI models made by Google and OpenAI at a top international mathematics competition, despite the programmes reaching gold-level scores for the first time.

Neither model scored full marks — unlike five young people at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), a prestigious annual competition where participants must be under 20 years old. Google said that an advanced version of its Gemini chatbot had solved five out of the six maths problems set at the IMO, held in Australia’s Queensland this month.

“We can confirm that Google DeepMind has reached the much-desired milestone, earning 35 out of a possible 42 points — a gold medal score,” the US tech giant cited IMO president Gregor Dolinar as saying. “Their solutions were astonishing in many respects. IMO graders found them to be clear, precise and most of them easy to follow.” Around 10 percent of human contestants won gold-level medals, and five received perfect scores of 42 points.

OpenAI said that its experimental reasoning model had scored a gold-level 35 points on the test. The result “achieved a longstanding grand challenge in AI” at “the world’s most prestigious math competition”, OpenAI researcher Alexander Wei wrote on social media.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2025