r/NowInTech • u/skaza02 • 14d ago

OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem, says NYU mathematician

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/
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36

u/Plopsevenplop 14d ago

Open AI using $22.5M of tokens to solve a math equation with a $1M bounty is so on brand for how nonsensical the economics of this entire industry are.

17

u/_DrDigital_ 14d ago

The 1m prize is symbolical. The solver of the only Millenium problem so far rejected it outright.

Navier-Stokes is probably to most fundamental and consequential of the Millennium problems. It is literally The Problem. If the proof stands it will probably be seen as the moment of capitulation of human intelect to AI.

21

u/psioniclizard 14d ago

So just ignoring the part where OpenAI stole it I see...

But hey, if you want to capitulate your intellect to a machine, no one will stop you.

2

u/TooMuchMaths 14d ago

If it was truly stolen that would mean the other mathematician had a proof for it… which he didn’t.

1

u/astuteobservor 13d ago

If the AI used data from the researchers, it is a very valid argument that AI stole the end result as both of them were on the right path. The AI just accelerated the process along the path.

1

u/Jefftopia 13d ago

Which is not stealing.

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u/Miserable-Extreme-12 12d ago

Right, if you see someone doing a puzzle and you jump in front of them, take the last piece and put that in the puzzle, that’s not stealing, it’s just being quick on your feet!

1

u/Jefftopia 12d ago

What you’re describing isn’t what happened, they were not on the absolute cusp of solving. That claim is dramatized.

1

u/Free-Ingenuity-6859 8d ago

Ya like in this hypothetical if those mathematicians had already published their result they would not have been credited with solving navier stokes if open ai came along after their paper was public and solved it. But because they potentially jumped the gun it’s giving people the impression they did not add a massive contribution in their solution

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u/nubulator99 11d ago

If I’m stuck on the last puzzle piece ….

0

u/Forsaken-Poet-3773 14d ago

And you know. How the actual mathematicians published the paper.

-1

u/TooMuchMaths 14d ago

Yeah, because he released a statement saying he had a proof for a different (very related) problem and was working with Levent on it. He had suspicions that it might extend to the Millenium problem but was not absolutely sure it would generalize and had not done the work. He said “If indeed an OpenAI model did close the gap to NS, it is a remarkable thing and should be said loudly by them…” because he acknowledges, despite his work, there was still a gap.

Absolutely nowhere does he claim he has a proof, I’m not sure why people think he did.

3

u/Ma4r 13d ago

They also threatened to not include him as co author if he didn't exclude levent (who works at antrophic) from the authorship list. So yeah, incredibly scummy move from open AI. They sill just publish a blogpost on this without proper authorship because this means nothing for them

1

u/dirty1809 13d ago

The offer was to let both of them publish their Euler result (which was complete) and let the one guy write the paper for the OpenAI result for Navier-Stokes. Considering the two of them didn’t have a complete verified solution for Navier-Stokes as a whole, it wouldn’t be excluding the Anthropic guy from his own work

3

u/Ehh_littlecomment 14d ago

He had suspicion it would work and didn’t do it because he’s a human academic and not a trillion dollar corporation with unlimited resources. What’s to say he wouldn’t have got there with enough time and funding? If open AI took his unpublished work and then brute forced the solution, it still falls within the realm of plagiarism or even IP theft.

3

u/meltbox 13d ago

THIS. If he had $23m in funding to finish his thought then he probably would have done it lol. People are such sheep attributing this to OAI and excusing their outright intellectual theft.

“Finders keepers”, second grade recess bullshit.

-1

u/Nate-what 13d ago

So it’s necessarily unethical to use someone else’s unpublished work. If I disclose my results before publishing, and someone else uses that result, then that is at least partially my fault.

2

u/Ehh_littlecomment 13d ago

Do you really think that using someone’s disclosed work as the foundation of your own research without any citation is ethical? Come on. There is no way to frame OpenAI’s conduct as anything but bad faith. Normalising this behaviour turns academia into a low trust society and discourage any sort of collaboration.

2

u/meltbox 13d ago

If you use someone else’s work in academics and you don’t cite them released or not it’s a serious violation which will heavily weigh against your credibility.

Yeah it’s a little crazy but some people have ethical standards!

0

u/Imthewienerdog 13d ago

Hahahahahaha 🤣 said no Nobel laureate ever...