Less than 24 hours after OpenAI claimed that its new model won the IMO gold medal, the plot took a big turn! Many IMO officials and academic leaders have spoken out, pointing out that OpenAI's approach is "rude and inappropriate." The IMO organizers required the AI ​​company to announce the results one week after the closing ceremony, so that the focus of attention would remain on the participating teenagers. However, OpenAI chose to announce the results impatiently just after the closing ceremony.

Some netizens commented:OpenAI, as always, will do anything for the sake of hype. There are no official scores, no patience, and no shame.

What’s even more exciting is that OpenAI’s self-proclaimed “gold medal” results may not be tenable at all:

OpenAI was not one of the AI ​​companies working with the IMO to test the model, and none of the 91 official IMO judges participated in evaluating their responses.

This means that OpenAI’s “gold medal” results are entirely self-reported and have not been officially certified.

What was originally thought to be a milestone moment in the development of AI, unexpectedly triggered a fierce debate about academic ethics and commercial hype.

IMO officials are angry: "Please leave some space for the children"

The trigger of the matter came from a revelation from a senior IMO person.

Joseph Myers, a veteran figure who has participated in the Mathematics Olympiad since 1992, had a conversation with IMO Secretary General Ria van Huffel.

The IMO jury and coordinators generally believe that it is "rude and inappropriate" for AI developers to announce results during IMO (especially before the closing ceremony). Officials expect AI companies to wait at least a week after the closing ceremony before releasing results.

For OpenAI, Noam Brown, who participated in this research, responded.

His statement admitted that OpenAI did not contact IMO officials in advance, but only informed an organizer before releasing the results, and the organizers asked them to announce the results after the closing ceremony.

This is in conflict with the request in the news that the closing ceremony will be held one week later.

So what exactly happened?

An announcement from Harmonic, another AI team participating in the competition, confirmed that there is indeed a requirement of "one week after the closing ceremony", and a specific time limit is given after July 28.

While OpenAI announced its results in a high-profile manner, another AI giant, Google DeepMind, was very restrained, in sharp contrast to OpenAI's publicity.

Multiple people familiar with the matter revealed that DeepMind may have achieved gold medal-level results, but they chose to comply with IMO requirements and wait for the right time.

In addition to the issue of the timing of the announcement, there is also controversy over whether OpenAI won the gold medal.

Thang Luong, who leads the DeepMind super reasoning team, added that IMO actually has an official scoring guide internally, which is not available externally. No scores based on this guideline will qualify for a medal.

This IMO has a total of 6 questions, each worth 7 points. The gold medal score is 35 points, and OpenAI's self-reported score has just passed the mark. Even a small deduction of points during the answer process may cause OpenAI to fall from gold medal to silver medal.

In short, this IMO gold medal battle is far from over, everything is still subject to the results certified by the IMO organizers.

One More Thing

Finally, let’s turn the spotlight back to the human gold medalists.

In the final results, the Chinese team occupied the top spot with 6 gold medals and a total score of 231 points. After losing to its old rival the United States by 2 points last year, the Chinese team once again returned to the world's number one.

In second place was the United States team, which won five gold medals and one silver medal, followed by South Korea, Japan and Poland.

The six players on the Chinese team are Deng Zhewen from Wuchang Experimental Middle School, Xu Qiming and Tan Hongyi from Wuhan Jingkai Foreign Languages ​​High School, Zhang Hengye from Chongqing Bashu Middle School, Dong Zhenyu from Hangzhou Xuejun Middle School, and Deng Leyan from Shanghai Middle School.

Among them, Deng Zhewen and Xu Qiming both participated in the 2024 IMO and successfully won gold medals, and Xu Qiming was successfully selected into the 2025 Peking University Mathematics Elite Class last year.

Dong Zhenyu is the only senior in the team. Although he entered the national training team as early as his freshman year in high school and was recommended to Tsinghua Yao Class, he missed the IMO national team in the selection in the first two years.

This is his third time hitting the national team, and he finally persevered and realized his dream IMO.

After Tan Hongyi was selected into the national training team for two consecutive years with the China Mathematical Olympiad (CMO) gold medal, he was also recommended to Tsinghua and Peking University.

In addition, Deng Leyan and Zhang Hengye scored a perfect score of 42 points in this IMO, tied for first place in the world. This is also the seventh consecutive IMO for the Chinese team since 2019 that players have received perfect scores.

Among them, Deng Leyan is the youngest member of the Chinese team. He is only a freshman in high school. Last year, he was selected into the national training team with full marks in CMO. He also stood out in the IMO national team selection, setting a new record for the youngest age of IMO players in Shanghai in the past 10 years.

Last year, he also won fifth place in the world in the combination and probability track of the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, and was the first middle school student to win a medal in this event.

Zhang Hengye won the gold medal in the 2023 CMO and was selected for the national team. He later also won the award in the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition. After being selected for the national team last year, he also took the initiative to attend the Mathematics Department of Peking University and benefited a lot.

You know, in this IMO, of the more than 600 contestants from around the world, only 6 received full marks, and almost everyone else lost on the sixth question - combinatorial mathematics. This was the only question that OpenAI failed to overcome.

In addition, the next IMO will be held in Shanghai Middle School. Shanghai Middle School has won 18 IMO gold medals so far, ranking first in the country. It will also become the first middle school in the world to host the International Mathematical Olympiad.

It is worth noting that almost all of the top 30 contestants in this year’s IMO are Asian or Eastern European faces.

The runner-up American team also has all Asian faces.

Netizens said,Maybe the math competition of the future will be Team China vs. Team USA vs. Artificial Intelligence.

Reference links:

[1]https://x.com/HarmonicMath/status/1947023450578763991

[2]https://www.imo-official.org/

[3]https://x.com/ai_for_success/status/1946984782178709719

[4]https://x.com/lmthang/status/1946960256439058844