OpenAI’s Supposed Mathematical Breakthrough Devolves Into Explosive Drama as Mathematician Accuses It of Stealing His Work

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced it had found a solution to an unsolved math problem using an army of advanced AI agents. However, the story quickly turned into a scandal as mathematicians accused the company of stealing their work. The supposed solution was for the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe fluid movement and have been studied for centuries.

These equations, listed as one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Problems, offer a $1 million prize for a solution. OpenAI claimed it found a way to solve the Navier-Stokes by deploying 10,000 AI agents for 88 hours, costing millions in computing costs. The breakthrough involved identifying a scenario where the equations can describe fluids accelerating to infinite velocity, seemingly impossible.

Yet, just hours before OpenAI's announcement, NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster accused OpenAI of stealing his work. He claimed their solution followed a similar path to his own and blamed OpenAI for only focusing on the Navier-Stokes after learning about Buckmaster's progress. OpenAI denied any unauthorized access to Buckmaster's work but admitted they could not rule out using de-identified data from user sessions to improve their models.

Buckmaster also accused OpenAI mathematician Sébastien Bubeck of pressuring him to remove his co-author, Levent Alpöge, from a paper. Bubeck denied these claims. The academic community expressed outrage, with renowned mathematician Terence Tao criticizing AI's impact on the field. He warned that sharing research directions could lead to a reversal of open science traditions, causing long-term damage to the field.