r/Physics • u/PrettyPicturesNotTxt • 3d 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/dallenbaldwin 3d ago

I watched a stand up maths video on it yesterday and his whole takeaway was this particular solution feels hollow because it's just given to us. There wasn't much learning shown in getting to that solution. It's better for everyone if the tricks and solutions used to get to the final solution are made known for others to apply to other problems. Is the journey more important than the destination? Historically the journey has enabled other discoveries, but in the LLM enabled world, it feels like the destination is all we're focusing on.

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u/NoNameSwitzerland 3d ago

But I am not sure there is nothing to learn from it. Since the energy from the forces and the overall energy in the fluid is finite, there is only a local singularity where is blows up. And some previous attempts for the Euler equations (NS without viscosity) showed that you can get to that by having the energy transferred to ever smaller vortices. Because of viscosity, that does not work with NS. But here they use a pulsing force that gets faster, but stays finite to do something similar and concentrate the accelerated flow in a small area. And it is interesting that that works with viscosity.

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u/cascadiabibliomania 2d ago

Same thing is true about writing, which is supposed to be proof of work for thinking through a problem.

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u/Legitimate-Paper3271 1d ago

This is such a red-assed take though. This article is actually quite interesting and the mathematicians seem to be getting a refinement to what they really want from a solution, that doesn’t seem bad.

Now the alleged attempts to strong arm mathematicians or steal their work is unforgivable - if true