Sam Altman's response to a satirical post about room-temperature superconductors has sparked a public challenge. The remark came during a dispute over OpenAI's claim that its agents solved one of the seven Millennium Prize problems, each worth $1 million.
The controversy surrounding the math problem is part ofs a larger debate. Mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster from New York University and Levent Alpoge from Anthropic claim that OpenAI's work may have relied on their unpublished research, though OpenAI denies this.
The discovery of a room-temperature superconductor would eliminate electricity waste in power grids, chargers, and chip design by carrying current with zero resistance. Current superconductors only function under extreme cold or crushing pressure.
While Anthropic has announced nothing regarding superconductors, one of its researchers who spent three years on pre-training work at both Anthropic and OpenAI has resigned this week over superintelligence safety warnings.
