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OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem, confirms NYU mathematician
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NYU mathematics professor Tristan Buckmaster announced three proofs on Tuesday with a preliminary finding on one of the major unsolved problems in theoretical mathematics.
Key facts
- All told, the week-long effort consumed 300 billion output tokens, $22.5 million worth of compute, if charged at current Astra rates
- The Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem is one of the seven Millennium Prize problems, a set of major unsolved math problems, each carrying a $1 million bounty from Clay Mathematics
- OpenAI’s post confirms much of this timeline, specifically saying that the latest effort began on September 1, inspired by rumors that two Millennium Prize problem had been solved
- NYU mathematics professor Tristan Buckmaster announced three proofs on Tuesday with a preliminary finding on one of the major unsolved problems in theoretical mathematics
Summary
“There is another part of this story,” Buckmaster wrote in his statement announcing the proofs, “and one that, honestly, I much wish I did not have to be concerned with.” According to the statement, a parallel effort by OpenAI built on their work before it became public, leading to a tangle of academic rivalries and conflicting claims. Shortly after the Buckmaster’s statement, OpenAI published a full proof of the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, which Buckmaster’s findings had taken steps towards. The Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem is one of the seven Millennium Prize problems, a set of major unsolved math problems, each carrying a $1 million bounty from Clay Mathematics Institute for the first person or group to provide a solution.