Anthropic · AI Agent · OpenAI · MIT Technology Review
The problem that OpenAI claims to have solved is known as the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem
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It is one of seven Millennium Prize Problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000.
Key facts
- It is one of seven Millennium Prize Problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000
- On Monday, NYU’s Buckmaster posted a proof on the social media site Mastodon showing that a simplified version of the Navier–Stokes equations can indeed break down—a major step forward
- MIT Technology Review reached out to Buckmaster for comment, but didn’t hear back before publication
- Last week, UCLA mathematician Terence Tao wrote a Mastodon thread describing how important mistakes, wrong directions, and incomplete solutions are for the field
Summary
OpenAI’s latest mathematical milestone has quickly become mired in controversy. Today, the company announced that its agents have solved one of the Millennium Prize Problems, some of the most important open problems in mathematics. It remains uncertain if OpenAI’s models made use of the work completed by Buckmaster and Alpöge, though Sébastien Bubeck, a member of the technical staff at OpenAI, said in a press briefing that the team was inspired to pursue the problem after hearing a rumor about Buckmaster and Alpöge’s efforts. AI models now seem essential for making progress on the most important mathematical problems of their time, and solving them may demand resources only available at a couple of frontier AI companies, which often defy the norms of academic collaboration that undergird most mathematical progress. The problem that OpenAI claims to have solved is known as the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem.