In this guest post, physicist and science writer Matt von Hippel shares what happened when he issued a challenge to AI companies regarding a problem in his former subfield of theoretical physics.It’s not often that you issue a challenge, only to see it beaten a month later. But we’re living in unusual times.Let me introduce myself: I’m Matt von Hippel. I used to be a theoretical physicist; these days I’m a science writer. Throughout, I’ve been a blogger, writing weekly at 4gravitons.com about ph...