OpenAI says an internal model solved more than 100 open maths problems, including Navier-Stokes

On 21 September, OpenAI announced an independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and ai, hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In the same announcement it said an unreleased internal model, which began training on 28 August, has resolved the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize problem and more than 100 other long-standing open problems.

OpenAI says the Navier-Stokes work used around 10,000 agents at once and produced a 166-page paper with a proof formally checked in Lean. It says it won't claim the $1 million Clay prize.

The disputes

• The list: OpenAI hasn't published the 100-plus problems, which makes the claim hard to assess.
• The right problem? Scientific American reports that many mathematicians find the approach unnatural: it relies on an external force and solves a variant they see as disconnected from physical reality.
• Credit: on 7 September, mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge made a major step using their own program and ai tools. OpenAI finished the job less than a day later, and credit is now disputed.

The advisory group, whose members include Timothy Gowers, Edward Witten and Martin Hairer, was formed after mathematicians published an open letter titled "A Severe Misalignment of ai in Mathematics".

Why it matters

If it holds up, this is ai doing mathematics at Millennium-problem scale. But at the moment we're asked to trust the machine, the people who would know are asking to see the working.