OpenAI announced that its internal model solved the Navier-Stokes problem, a Millennium Prize challenge that has remained unsolved for nearly 90 years. The company utilized a swarm of approximately 10,000 AI agents to complete the task in 88 hours. OpenAI stated that the project cost millions of dollars and was initiated after hearing rumors on social media about other researchers making progress on similar problems.
The announcement sparked controversy involving Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, who was working on a related problem with Levent Alpöge from Anthropic. Buckmaster alleged that OpenAI pressured him to exclude his coauthor and credit the company's model. He also questioned whether OpenAI accessed his private sessions on the Codex platform while he was researching the topic.
OpenAI has denied accessing any specific user data to solve the problem, though it acknowledged it cannot rule out that de-identified data from product usage may have indirectly influenced its models. The company stated it has no intention of claiming the $1 million bounty associated with the Millennium Prize, characterizing the effort as a demonstration of its AI capabilities.
The incident has drawn criticism from the academic community regarding research ethics and transparency. Mathematicians expressed concerns that the use of large-scale computational resources to potentially scoop ongoing research could undermine the culture of trust and openness in the field. Experts noted that while the achievement highlights the power of AI, it has also created significant friction with academic researchers.
