Earlier this year, a handful of A.I. models achieved gold medal performances in the International Math Olympiad—the ne plus ultra of math competitions, which draws the brightest high-school students from around the globe for its two-day test. The competition forces participants to tackle maddeningly difficult problems that demand creativity, critical thinking, and a deep knowledge of multiple branches of mathematics—all of which also makes it an ideal forum for testing model capabilities. This year, OpenAI and Google DeepMind tested advanced, unreleased systems, and both scored 35 out of 42, correctly answering five out of six questions—worse than the best teenage mathletes in the world, but better than just about everyone else.