AI Research Breakthroughs and Leadership Shifts: OpenAI's Astra Solves 10 Open Math Problems, DeepMind's Hassabis Steps Down

OpenAI's unreleased Astra model produced solutions or substantial progress on 10 open math problems, including sphere packing (first improvement since 1978) and Connes' rigidity conjecture, costing ~$2k in tokens. This follows their May disproof of the Erdős unit-distance conjecture, signaling accelerating AI-driven discovery. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down to co-found Discovery Loop, a PBC focused on automating science and engineering, addressing the data scarcity bottleneck. These developments mark a strategic pivot towards using AI for genuine scientific research and discovery.