Phones are the new cigarettes: why restaurants are discouraging and even banning them

Phones are the new cigarettes: why restaurants are discouraging and even banning them. Photograph: Tony Smith/AlamyPhones are the new cigarettes: why restaurants are discouraging and even banning themWould you hand in your phone at the door in exchange for a free bottle of wine?

What happened

So this is specifically to do with banning phones in restaurants? Other restaurants simply have a no phones policy, in a bid to encourage conversation and to re-establish focus on the food and the experience. Anything that encourages human connection is worth sacrificing a few hours of doomscrolling for. ”Don’t say: “I can still do my podcast from here though, right? ”Explore more on these topicsRestaurantsPass notesMobile phonesPubsFoodSocial etiquettefeaturesShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed Skip to main contentSave this storySave this storyMathematician and author Steven Strogatz starts to cry when he talks about the artificial-intelligence-driven breakthroughs in his field over the past week.

The announcement was marred by claims from another mathematician, Tristan Buckmaster, who says that OpenAI rushed ahead to solve the problem after learning of his work alongside Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge. On who deserves the credit for solving the problem, and the million-dollar prize:I would love to see Córdoba and Martínez-Zoroa get the money, but let's be careful here because there's another pair of people who should be talked about, who are Tristan Buckmaster at New York University and a young mathematician named Levent Alpöge.

Skip to main contentSkip to navigation A sign discouraging mobile phone use in the White Horse pub, Soho, London.

The wider picture

Photograph: Tony Smith/AlamyView image in fullscreenA sign discouraging mobile phone use in the White Horse pub, Soho, London. Ironically, a decade ago many fine dining establishments were unbanning mobiles, surrendering to the idea that people couldn’t be stopped from posting photographs of their food. It’s supposed to work on a psychological level – to preserve privacy and allow people to enjoy themselves without distraction. At Antagonist, a bar in Charlotte, North Carolina, customers are required to put their phones in a locked pouch of the type used to enforce phone bans in schools.

At the Trophy Room in Phoenix, Arizona, guests’ phones are stored in a vintage filing cabinet during their visit. At the Clink restaurant in London they lock all phones in an outside cabin, but that’s because the restaurant is actually inside HMP Brixton, where possession of a mobile phone is prohibited. At Al Condominio in Verona, Italy, customers are offered a free bottle of wine if they surrender their phones before the meal. Pizza Express initiated phone-free afternoons last summer, and even Wetherspoons has drawn a line.

What has been reported

The solution—which still needs to be independently verified—builds on a strategy developed by Spanish mathematicians Diego Córdoba and Luis Martínez-Zoroa. Last week, Anthropic said Claude had proved 29,500 small theorems while formalizing an existing proof of the infamous Fermat’s Last Theorem—a project other mathematicians had been working on for years. In August, OpenAI announced it had made advancements in 10 other long-standing mathematical problems. AI is making mathematical breakthroughs happen faster, Strogatz says, but what it means for the experts who have dedicated their lives to the field is decidedly less clear.

“I think the year 2026 is going to be remembered as either an annus mirabilis or annus horribilis for mathematics because so much has happened,” Strogatz tells WIRED, sitting in front of a wall covered in framed university honors. "I actually feel kind of upset that I've dedicated 15 years of my life to research mathematics, and at a point in my career where I'm very productive and at my peak strength as a mathematician, that peak skill is no longer there.

“Instinctively, I'm really terrified. ”Here, he reflects on what the AI breakthroughs of 2026 mean for math, mathematicians, and humanity. This is a marketing device for them to prove how good their machines are.

What happens next

Nobody cares about the Navier-Stokes singularity problem; only a tiny subset of pure mathematicians care about that. Arguably, you could say Buckmaster should get the money because Buckmaster posted a couple of days before OpenAI with Levent the solution to three very closely related problems to the Navier-Stokes. On whether AI still needs human mathematicians:We need proof digestion, which is explaining it in terms that human beings can understand and appreciate. You could do infinitely many things in math, but only some of them will be interesting to human beings.

So who will be the arbiter of good mathematical taste? I don't want you guys getting in here without putting in the work. ’On what it means for human mathematicians:There are people who were always thrilled being the first to climb the mountain. It won't be possible for us to even aspire to climb the highest mountains because the machines will always get there first.

The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across theguardian.com, wired.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.