Dispute Erupts Between NYU Mathematician and OpenAI Over AI-Assisted Proof of Millennium Prize Problem
aiinsider ·
A dispute has emerged between NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and OpenAI over an AI-assisted proof of the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, a Millennium Prize problem. Buckmaster announced preliminary progress on the problem with Anthropic mathematician Levent Alpöge, using AI models including Codex, but controversy arose after OpenAI published a full proof of the same problem shortly afterward. Buckmaster claimed OpenAI's effort, involving an unreleased model, began only after information about his team's progress reached OpenAI, and he found it suspicious that OpenAI independently arrived at the same unusual approach. OpenAI said its effort began on September 1 following rumors the problem had been solved and confirmed ongoing communications with Buckmaster's team. Buckmaster also alleged that OpenAI mathematician Sébastien Bubeck pressured him to remove Alpöge's credit and to avoid making the dispute public. OpenAI denied accessing the researchers' work before its public release and stated its proof differed meaningfully, though it acknowledged it could not entirely rule out that de-identified user data may have influenced its models.
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