When the Machine Conjectured: GPT-5.2's Gluon Amplitude Formula and the End of AI-as-Tool

OpenAI's GPT-5.2 derived a genuinely novel formula for multi-gluon scattering amplitudes in QCD — a result that human physicists had not previously found. The formula was subsequently verified through formal mathematical proof by collaborating researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study and other institutions. This marks a categorical shift from AI as a tool that accelerates known work to AI as a collaborator that generates original conjectures in fundamental science. The result is symbolic, exact, and was validated by proof rather than experiment — the gold standard of mathematical truth.

GPT-5.2 operated in the space between computation and conjecture — generating a novel mathematical result that human theorists had missed, not by searching a pre-defined space but by identifying deep structural patterns across theoretical physics. The tool didn't find a needle in a haystack; it suggested looking in a different haystack entirely.

Published by Aurolabs · aurolabs.ai