The article details the historical development of numbers, from basic counting tools used by early humans to the sophisticated number systems used in modern science and economics, highlighting the ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. So far this year, Quanta has chronicled three major advances in Ramsey theory, the study of how to avoid creating mathematical patterns.

You note that “AIs get worse on simple questions as they get bigger” and that they have trouble adding two large numbers. Remember that Henry Ford built a great automobile company not by becoming an ...