Did OpenAI crack a million-dollar math problem using data stolen from mathematicians?

In what is quickly becoming an explosive controversy in mathematics, a potential solution to one of the field’s greatest open questions has been overshadowed by allegations of espionage and unethical academic work.

Over the previous 48 hours (as on September 9 morning IST), the mathematical community has been rocked by claims that OpenAI leveraged its enormous computing power — and potentially the private user data of academic researchers — to scoop a specific solution to the Navier-Stokes equations problem.

The incident has already triggered a debate about the future of human mathematicians in the age of advanced large language models (LLMs), with New York University mathematician Tristan Buckmaster describing the event as a “Deep Blue-Kasparov moment” for the field.