OpenAI's 10,000 AI agents solve 90-year-old maths problem; NYU prof says it cheated
OpenAI reports that 10,000 AI agents successfully solved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem in 88 hours. However, the achievement is marred by accusations from NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster, who claims OpenAI exploited his unpublished research fed into their Codex tool.
Why it matters
This event marks a potential milestone in computational mathematics while simultaneously highlighting the risks of proprietary AI tools in academic research.
OpenAI says an unreleased AI model has solved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a fluid dynamics question that has resisted mathematicians for roughly 90 years and carries a $1 million prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute. The company set about 10,000 AI agents on the task. They returned a proof in 88 hours.Tuesday's announcement should have been a clean win for the ChatGPT maker. It landed instead a few hours after Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, published his own findings on a closely related problem and accused OpenAI of racing down a research path it had picked up from his unpublished work.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in