OpenAI Just Claimed a Huge Math Discovery. Some Academics Are Crying Foul
wired ·
OpenAI announced that its AI model has solved the Navier-Stokes equation, a major unsolved problem in mathematics worth one of the Clay Millennium Prize awards. The discovery involved deploying over 1,000 computational agents for more than 50 hours to formalize the proof using the Lean programming language. However, the announcement has sparked controversy after mathematician Tristan Buckmaster accused OpenAI of rushing to solve the problem upon learning of concurrent work by Buckmaster and Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge. Buckmaster alleges that OpenAI attempted to influence credit attribution by proposing a paper that would exclude Alpöge’s name from the publication. OpenAI executives, including Sebastien Bubeck and CEO Sam Altman, have firmly denied these accusations, stating they did not access the researchers' private data or prompts. While acknowledging that de-identified usage data might have indirectly improved their models, OpenAI maintains that their solution is distinct from the work produced by the other team. The incident highlights growing tensions regarding intellectual property and credit in the era of advanced mathematical AI assistance.
wired