OpenAI's breakthrough solution for the elusive Navier-Stokes problem overshadowed by plagiarism controversy — researcher says OpenAI scraped Codex session and issued career threats
OpenAI announced that a team using one of its internal frontier models has solved the Navier-Stokes problem. However, the announcement has been mired in controversy.
OpenAI's announcement of a breakthrough solution to the Navier-Stokes problem has been overshadowed by a plagiarism controversy, according to a researcher. The company claims its staff and internal models have solved the conditions of Navier-Stokes solutions set forth in the Millennium Prize Problems, which are worth a $1 million prize and eternal renown.
However, the researcher, Tristan Buckmaster, and his colleague, Levent Alpöge, have been working on proving Euler's equations, a related problem, for a year. They used Anthropic Claude and OpenAI Codex as assistants, and the substantial compute time was paid by Buckmaster from his own pockets. The team's work was verified using Lean, a standardized programming language designed to verify mathematical proofs.
On September 3, Alpöge revealed rumors of OpenAI working on the problem, which Buckmaster clarified was a personal collaboration between him and Alpöge. OpenAI responded that they had proven a finite-time blowup for the forced Navier-Stokes equations, but Buckmaster claims this approach was already known to his team. OpenAI allegedly offered Buckmaster two options: publish the Euler proof first or write a paper with the Navier-Stokes proof while removing Alpöge from the team.
Buckmaster declined both offers, leading to a threat from OpenAI, claiming that Buckmaster's career would be ruined if he did not comply.
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