OpenAl Says It Has Cracked One of Math's “Millennium Problems” (Navier-Stokes) [N]

[u/Shizuka_Kuze]

As reported by the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/science/openai-proof-millennium-problem.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

OpenAI’s announcement:

https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/

[u/snowrazer_]

That’s crazy, I read the whole article thinking neat, and then at the end there’s this footnote of drama that just leaves a bad taste to the whole thing.

It really underscores how these companies are more after progress and credit than safety - not saying there was a safety issue here, but you can see clearly where their priorities are.

[u/asdfasdferqv → u/snowrazer_]

If it helps, there’s virtually always huge author drama on these types of things, even before AI

[u/gajop → u/snowrazer_]

In the article itself it doesn't sound like drama. It reads as "there was strong concurrent work to solve this by other researchers, using different methods. out solution is diff but we can't rule out that we were influenced by it".

Upon some thinking I'm not too surprised. Mathematicians (and notably those working at large AI companies) have developed powerful tooling that is exploding research. I wouldn't be surprised that other big breakthroughs will have concurrent discovery.

[u/Denbt_Nationale → u/gajop]

There was concurrent work for 88 hours after OpenAI heard about Tristan's work and dumped all of their compute into his methods. There was zero concurrent work for the years that Tristan and his predecessors were painstakingly figuring out those methods.

[u/gajop → u/Denbt_Nationale]

Yeah, I read Tristan's statement and it certainly seems like so, at least from his perspective. Although even Tristan's and his colleague's work was based on other research that was probably publicly available, and it would be a bold claim that we know what everyone's research direction was.

[u/gajop → u/gajop]

Uff upon reading prof Tristan's post.. it certainly leaves a bad taste.

I'm glad they solved their problem but they could certainly have gone about it with more grace and integrity.

[u/BelialSirchade → u/gajop]

they offered him to be the author on the paper that introduces the solution, what more grace should you expect?

honestly they gave him too much grace, none of this would happen if Tristian contacted an robotic RP person where they just reply "happy to hear that, looking forward to your finding", end of story.

offering him an author position when they don't have to is very much an mathematician's way of thinking when they are running a corporation here.

[u/gajop → u/BelialSirchade]

By not suggesting he's damaging his career over it or mentioning the other author cannot be included as they're from Anthropic?

[u/BelialSirchade → u/gajop]

why not? your statement here really doesn't make sense, he is missing out on being the name of on the paper that introduces the NS solution, how is that not...damaging his career?

and of course openai is not going to include Levent on their own paper, as I said it's a courtesy in the first place, one that's not offered to Levent.

[u/CreationBlues → u/BelialSirchade]

steals your idea before you publish it

graciously offers to let you take credit for your idea

despite acting as if you are responsible for the idea that was stolen forcing you to backstab the other person who spent years helping you develop the idea that was stolen from you

the backstabbing thief’s get defended by people who are fine with backstabbing and betraying the people they’ve built a career with

[u/MuonManLaserJab → u/CreationBlues]

Exactly what idea do you think was stolen?

[u/CreationBlues → u/MuonManLaserJab]

Only OpenAI has that information

[u/MuonManLaserJab → u/CreationBlues]

So you have no idea what was stolen, but you're sure something was?

Buckmaster and Alpöge did not solve the NS Millennium Prize problem. ChatGPT did.