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When the Hype Train Goes Off the Rails

Demis Hassabis, the head of Google DeepMind, recently put it very simply when he saw a viral post about AI: “This is embarrassing.” He was talking about the way people are talking about technology online today. This is a perfect example of how AI boosterism on social media can make things look much more impressive than they actually are.

It all started when an OpenAI researcher claimed that their latest model, GPT-5, had solved 10 unsolved math problems. On social media, people went wild. They thought we had reached a new era of science where computers could do what the smartest humans couldn't. But as it turns out, the truth was a lot more boring. If you want to keep up with how technology is changing, you should follow our latest updates.

The Math Drama You Might Have Missed

The problems in question are called Erdős problems. They are named after Paul Erdős, a famous mathematician who left behind hundreds of puzzles. A mathematician named Thomas Bloom keeps a website to track which ones are solved and which ones aren't.

When the news broke that AI had solved these, Bloom checked the work. He found that the AI hadn't actually solved anything new. Instead, it had just found papers on the internet where humans had already solved the problems years ago. Bloom just hadn't updated his website yet. Because the AI had read almost everything on the web, it found the answers that the human expert missed.

Why This Matters

While it is cool that an AI can search through millions of papers, it isn't the same as making a brand-new discovery. This is where AI boosterism on social media becomes a problem. It turns a useful search tool into a "genius scientist" for the sake of a viral post. Here are a few reasons why this happens:

People want to be the first to announce a big breakthrough.
Short social media posts don't have room for the boring details.
The desire for "clout" often beats the desire for accuracy.

Overdoing Everything for the Clicks

This isn't just happening with math. We see AI boosterism on social media in medicine and law too. People claim AI can pass the bar exam or diagnose diseases better than doctors. But when you look at the actual data, things are different. For example, a report in Nature shows that while AI can help with some medical tasks, it still makes big mistakes when suggesting treatments.

Another example involved a math problem that some claimed was a "Lee Sedol moment" for AI—referring to the famous Go match where a computer beat a human champion. In reality, experts said the problem was something you would give to a college student. It wasn't a world-changing event, but the internet made it sound like one.

The Bottom Line

We should be excited about what technology can do, but we need to stop the constant cycle of AI boosterism on social media. When we exaggerate what these tools can do, we miss out on the real, quiet progress that is actually happening. If you are looking for more balanced views, we have some helpful resources that explain how these systems actually work without all the noise.

Real science takes time. It’s rarely a single viral moment on an app. By cooling down the hype, we can actually understand how to use these tools to make our lives better without being disappointed when they don't solve the world's hardest puzzles overnight.