OpenAI Says Its AI Just Solved a 90-Year-Old Math Problem — One Mathematician Calls It Theft
Controversy surrounds OpenAI’s claim that it took 10,000 agents a weekend to solve one of math’s six unsolved “million-dollar” problems.
When OpenAI cracked one of math’s six unsolved “million-dollar” problems, the academic world was stunned. The 90-year-old question, part of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s famous Millennium Prize Problems, asks whether the equations that govern fluid motion can break down in extreme situations. OpenAI says its AI resolved it in a matter of days. But mathematician Tristan Buckmaster says OpenAI copied off of his work, according to Scientific American.
In a statement, Buckmaster said he and fellow mathematician Levent Alpöge, who works at Anthropic, had already made major progress on the problem. But before they could publish, he says word of their approach reached OpenAI, and the company used it to finish the job over a single weekend with the help of 10,000 agents.
Buckmaster says things got weird after that. He claims OpenAI offered to give him full credit, but only if Alpöge, who works for a competitor, was left out entirely. When he pushed back, he says an OpenAI employee told him, “Why would you ruin your career?”
When OpenAI cracked one of math’s six unsolved “million-dollar” problems, the academic world was stunned. The 90-year-old question, part of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s famous Millennium Prize Problems, asks whether the equations that govern fluid motion can break down in extreme situations. OpenAI says its AI resolved it in a matter of days. But mathematician Tristan Buckmaster says OpenAI copied off of his work, according to Scientific American.
In a statement, Buckmaster said he and fellow mathematician Levent Alpöge, who works at Anthropic, had already made major progress on the problem. But before they could publish, he says word of their approach reached OpenAI, and the company used it to finish the job over a single weekend with the help of 10,000 agents.
Buckmaster says things got weird after that. He claims OpenAI offered to give him full credit, but only if Alpöge, who works for a competitor, was left out entirely. When he pushed back, he says an OpenAI employee told him, “Why would you ruin your career?”
