OpenAI Forms Independent Math Advisory Panel After Series of PR Missteps
Hosted by Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, the nine-member AGMAI includes mathematicians from Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, with no OpenAI pay or speech restrictions. Its first task is coordinating results from an internal model said to have solved 100+ longstanding problems.
OpenAI announced in September 2026 the formation of an independent advisory panel of elite mathematicians tasked with guiding the company — and other AI firms — on how to interact with the mathematics community, including how new results are presented and released.
The nine-member group, called the Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AGMAI), is hosted by Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). Its members are drawn from institutions including Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge, and collectively hold multiple Fields Medals and MacArthur “genius grants.” Members will not be paid by OpenAI and have not signed restrictive agreements limiting what they can say publicly.
The panel’s formation follows a period of significant reputational damage for OpenAI after the company announced high-profile mathematical results — including the resolution of the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem — while facing accusations of scooping researchers, failing to credit human work its models built upon, and poor communication with the broader math community. OpenAI simultaneously disclosed that its unreleased internal model has now “resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics,” and the group has identified coordinating the release of those results as its immediate priority.
Advisory group member Martin Hairer, a professor at Imperial College London and EPFL, wrote in a blog post that the group is “genuinely independent” of OpenAI and stressed that its “overarching aim is to represent as well as we possibly can the interests of the mathematical community.” He acknowledged, however, that members “would be very naïve to believe that the AI labs won’t try to spin whatever we say.”
Reactions from the wider mathematics community have been mixed. Some researchers welcomed the engagement but questioned whether a small group of prominent academics can represent mathematicians broadly. “It feels like an ivory tower,” said Francesco Fournier-Facio, an incoming professor at Heriot-Watt University. Others questioned the selection process, noting the group’s origins remain unclear. Imperial College London professor Kevin Buzzard suggested a high-profile committee may not have been necessary to convey what mathematicians actually want from AI companies.