On January 26, the top academic journal "Nature Machine Intelligence" published a major breakthrough by a Chinese research team: the world's first general artificial intelligence system with both "self-posed questions" and "automatic problem-solving" capabilities - **"TongGeometry"** - has officially been released. This achievement marks a paradigm shift in AI's approach to mathematical reasoning from "passive imitation" to "active creation."
Paradigm Shift: From "Problem-Solving Machine" to "Mathematical Creator"
For a long time, AI in the field of mathematics mainly acted as a "test taker." However, TongGeometry, developed by Dr. Zhang Chi from the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence, is the first AI system to grant AI a "aesthetic" standard similar to that of human mathematicians. It can accurately capture and create high-quality geometric problems from an astronomical number of spatial combinations.
Its originality has already been recognized by competition authorities: the system generated three new geometry problems that have been officially included in the 2024 National High School Mathematics League (Beijing Division) and the Ersatz Math Olympiad in the United States. This marks the first time AI-generated questions have entered high-level human math competitions.
Performance Leap: Consumer Graphics Cards Outperform 25 Years of Olympiad Problems
In terms of practical efficiency, TongGeometry demonstrates the advantage of domestic original technology:
Lightweight Computing Power: Unlike Google DeepMind's AlphaGeometry, which requires a large computing cluster, TongGeometry can run with just a single RTX4090 consumer-grade graphics card.
Extreme Efficiency: The system can solve nearly all International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) geometry problems from the past 25 years within 38 minutes.
Path Compression: Relying on innovative "normalized representation" technology, the system compresses the search space by several orders of magnitude, solving the long-standing "path explosion" problem that plagued traditional AI.
Evaluation and Significance
Zhang Chi, the first author of the paper, pointed out that the success of TongGeometry lies in achieving a leap from "modifying others' solutions" to "independent and autonomous creation." This high level of logical autonomy and efficient reasoning ability opens up new paths for the application of general artificial intelligence (AGI) in complex logical fields.
