An open letter criticizes Caltech's Mathathon, a math competition sponsored by Anthropic and OpenAI offering $2 million in AI credits. The authors argue AI companies are engaging in research misconduct by prioritizing speed and publicity over rigorous peer review, extracting unpaid labor from mathematicians to verify hastily-produced results, and exacerbating corporate influence over academic mathematics.
Mathathon is assembling 100 teams of mathematicians for a competition featuring 40 hours of onsite work at Caltech (October 30–November 1) with $2M+ in AI credits to solve open mathematical problems. The event aims to provide frontier AI models to the math community while promoting responsible AI use, equity, and transparency through open-sourced chat logs and formal verification.