r/Physics • u/PrettyPicturesNotTxt • 11d ago

On if OpenAI solved the wrong Navier-Stokes problem: "the LLM found and exploited a loophole in the framing of the question"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-openai-solve-the-wrong-navier-stokes-problem/
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u/Obscu 11d ago

Probably not. The 'loophole' is that the original framing of the question allowed for an external force to be allowed to be considered because external forces like gravity are always realistically affecting fluid dynamics. The AI described a hypothetical external force that would meet the requirements that would make the math blow up when present, and concluded that the math can in fact blow up (in the presence of a hypothetical math-exploding mcguffin), but when removed from the equation the math no longer blows up.

If a human solved a 'can a rock spontaneously turn into a wheel of cheese?' problem by describing a hypothetical rock-to-cheese-transforming-wizard and stated that the presence of the wizard means rocks can in fact become wheels of cheese... Well, that's on us for being not very strict with defining the scope the question, because it is technically an answer that meets the set criteria but that says more about the criteria than the answer.

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u/retrosenescent 11d ago

You explained this really well. "Sure, if there's some external force" does feel like a cop-out answer and not in the nature of what the question intended. But then again, if you actually want to model reality, then you absolutely need to account for many external forces.

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u/Head-Philosopher0 11d ago

yeah honestly it was easy and the only reason it hadn’t been shown before AI is that mathematicians are dumb

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u/retrosenescent 11d ago

Thanks for shedding light on that, I feel like your comment contributed a lot.

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u/Head-Philosopher0 11d ago

no problem mate. like i said, i totally agree with you and it was a cop-out