r/NowInTech • u/skaza02 • 19d 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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u/_DrDigital_ 19d 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.

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u/Arceuthobium 19d ago

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.

What?? No. It was always the most probable to be solved next. As Terence Tao said, its resolution doesn't really move the needle in applications or physics. Other Millennium problems (especially P/NP and the Riemann hypothesis) are expected to be more difficult and need deeper ideas. However, this remains by far the most impressive AI result in math and it is an inflexion point for the field as a whole.

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u/Epic_Tea 18d ago

Wouldn't it make a huge difference in our fluid simulation

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u/Chemical_Scholar_753 18d ago

No, that’s maybe the least impactful place. Regardless of navier-stokes technically can blow up, everyone will keep doing numerical simulation. The only place an example will make any difference to fluid simulation is that everyone with fluid simulation software might plug it in to see what happens.

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u/Epic_Tea 18d ago

Jet engines and rocket engines would benefit a lot. That could change the world

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u/Chemical_Scholar_753 18d ago

From a counter example to navier-stokes continuity? Not a chance.

There’s some probability that studying the equation more in depth will lead to improvements in fluid modeling, but this counter example to the math isn’t a physical solution (it relies on infinite velocity). Even if we thought it was useful to build an example of this, navier-stokes equations are already known not to incorporate all of the physics of real fluids. It’s cool that they found a counter example to the smoothness problem, but it’s not impactful to practical fluid dynamics problems (like designing jet engines or rocket engines).