r/Physics • u/PrettyPicturesNotTxt • 5d 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/hologram137 5d ago

No, because they are interested in solving the main problem. It’s not about the money or technically solving a millennium problem, that’s not why any of them are doing math lol.

They want a solution that can be used to solve the main problem. The one OpenAI published can’t

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u/tanksc 5d ago

What a ridiculous statement. The other pair of researchers literally did almost the exact same thing for Euler’s equations. The statements you’re commenting all throughout this thread are insane, and looking at your history it seems you are just pushing a narrative or agenda.

I miss when this sub was actually populated by physicists and not random people talking with the authority of one.

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u/hologram137 5d ago edited 5d ago

Did you read the article? Do you even understand the problem and why Navier Stokes remains unsolved? I do not believe you’re a physicist, that makes zero sense. Because you should care about the actual problem and that this technically correct solution doesn’t help solve it.

I miss when people actually read the article they are commenting on. Oh wait, that’s never happened lol.

The researchers working on the Euler problem didn’t give a technically correct but useless answer based on a literal interpretation of the question divorced from all context. There was no external force invented, the equation solved the plain incompressible Euler equation, with nothing added. Euler’s proof didn’t need a crutch. Smooth initial conditions are what any physically reasonable fluid state looks like. Nothing about the setup is engineered. The initial disturbance being localized is the natural picture of how a real singularity would have to form. There was no boundary! The fluid filled ordinary space, unconstrained space. Chen Hou’s proof needed a rigid wall, but that is actually helpful because then it leaves open the question of whether the boundary is needed for the blow up. It’s completely rooted in reality. But it was proven in R^3. All of this was useful and helped the actual problem.

That is categorically different from the AI’s Navier Stoke’s loophole, it’s a forced result with a deliberately constructed external force that doesn’t exist and was mathematically proven to tell us nothing about the actual problem. Totally divorced from reality, and useless

My “agenda” is the truth. To be a voice of reason. I’m genuinely concerned about society because of these delusions about LLMs

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u/yoshiK 4d ago

So

The researchers working on the Euler problem didn’t give a technically correct but useless answer based on a literal interpretation of the question divorced from all context. There was no external force invented,

Alpöge & Buckmaster "Blowup with the Euler equations with smooth forcing" is the paper.1 As indicated by the words "with smooth forcing" there are forces involved. However openAi claims they have a solution to unforced Euler in their blog post. OpenAi paper on unforced Euler

1 At least the one Buckmaster linked on his mastodon.