OpenAI Says Its AI Solved a Millennium Prize Problem

Did AI crack a 90-year-old math problem in 88 hours or did it quietly borrow two mathematicians' work?

Published 3 days ago

#Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI Says Its AI Solved a Millennium Prize Problem

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Above: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on Sept. 2. Image credit: Matt Ramey/AFP/Getty Images

The Spin

Pro-establishment narrative

A question that stumped mathematicians for 90 years was solved in 88 hours, and the proof shows smooth fluid motion can indeed blow up into infinities. It shipped with a Lean formalization, so every logical step can be machine-checked instead of spending years on human verification. No one is even claiming prize money, which makes the achievement itself the point.

Aakash Gupta on X

Establishment-critical narrative

Two independent mathematicians did the real work here, and their proof addressed a related Navier-Stokes problem — not the million-dollar Millennium Prize. Suspiciously, a nearly identical approach popped out of OpenAI weeks after one author reached out, with no clear answer about whether those chats fed the training data. Offering credit only if an Anthropic-affiliated coauthor gets erased says everything.

Konsti Wohlwend on X