Neuroscientist Tamara Stawicki woke abruptly to her mobile phone ringing shortly after 1 a.m. on 24 August 2025. After a brief conversation, Stawicki got out of bed and drove to a quiet car park.

Artificial intelligence systems may be good at generating text, recognizing images, and even solving basic math problems—but when it comes to advanced mathematical reasoning, they are hitting a wall.

Among high school students and adults, girls and women are much more likely to use traditional, step-by-step algorithms to solve basic math problems – such as lining up numbers to add, starting with ...