This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. OpenAI says its agents have solved one of the most important open problems in mathematics. Under normal circumstances, that would be a huge milestone.
But the announcement has been overshadowed by accusations that OpenAI failed to credit researchers whose AI-assisted work influenced its solution. Whether those accusations are true or not, the episode may mark a turning point in the history of mathematics. AI models now seem essential for making progress on the field’s most important problems, but solving them may demand resources available only to a couple of frontier AI companies.
If that’s the future we are headed for, it is unclear how human mathematicians will fit into it. Read on to see how AI could reshape mathematics. Battery installations hit a new record in the US in the second quarter of 2026, with 20.2 gigawatt-hours of new capacity coming online.
That’s enough to supply the daily electricity needs of 600,000 homes. The surge puts the country on track for another record year, driven by cheaper batteries and an urgent need for more energy storage as renewables are added to the grid. But the boom looks different for grid-scale and residential batteries.
Take a closer look at the forces reshaping the US battery market. Danijar Hafner’s office in San Francisco’s SoMa district sits mostly empty, but what it lacks in decor, it makes up for in robots. Humanoids of various shapes and sizes hang like marionettes from racks that run down the center of the wide-open space.
Hafner won’t say too much about his new venture just yet, but describes it as a continuation of his longtime work to enable AI to navigate environments it has not encountered in training. Over the years, the 31-year-old has honed his approach by pitting agents trained within his world models against popular video games. More recently, he’s begun migrating his agents out of the virtual world and into physical reality.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
