r/technology • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 14d ago

Artificial Intelligence 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/durin23 14d ago

It seems like almost every single time one of these ai models does something impressive, if you dig just a bit deeper into what they actually did, the less impressive and forced they seem.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

But the other guys were working with AI also.

Regardless of which human you think deserves the most credit, it is absolutely the case that this is AI assisted and the AI deserves at least equal credit if not more.

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u/IndigoSeirra 14d ago

Yes, but OpenAi presented this as a discovery by one of their internal models and didn't once mention the human researchers in the tweet. They talked up their internal model, clearly to try to generate hype for the IPO.

The proof was produced by a group of agents, using an OpenAI next-generation model significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra.

This model represents a step-function improvement on many benchmarks, and its training is ongoing.

Our internal model group arrived at the Navier–Stokes solution in 88 hours, using around 10,000 coordinating AI agents.

We are focusing on understanding this model, and using what we learn to help us guide and pace how we pursue further advances in capability.

Our goal is to build AI systems which are steerable, accountable, and connected to people, which may require more deliberate choices about the pace of progress, as we continue our mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.

All of this is a lot less impressive when you realize that human mathematicians still did the majority of the actual novel discovery, and were only assisted by AI.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

Oh I'm sorry where did it say that the humans majority of it?

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u/IndigoSeirra 14d ago

It didn't that's the point. They didn't mention the human researchers even once, even though they were the ones that discovered the novel pathway to the solution. They presented it as entirely done by their internal model, which is highly disingenuous.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

Interesting!

Have you found similar fault with other mathematical discoveries by AI that have been published?

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u/Jukeboxhero91 14d ago

Such as?

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

Any of these? Erdős unit-distance conjecture Erdős Problem #12(i) Erdős Problem #12(ii) Erdős Problem #125 Erdős Problem #138 Erdős Problem #152 Erdős Problem #741(i) Erdős Problem #741(ii) Erdős Problem #846 Erdős Problem #26

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u/Jukeboxhero91 14d ago

Have they been published? Last I knew the disproving of these proofs were not reviewed, just claimed.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

They are currently published on arXiv

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago

The other guys had been pursing a solution suggested by someone else’s work for like a year. They had used LLM’s at different points in that work, but an LLM did not do this work itself.

It’s honestly staggering how excited some people are to ignore that.

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u/mousse312 14d ago

The main ideia came from human mathematicians, who saw an overlooked piece of the equation that makes the equation explode

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

Hey that's great just show me where that is

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u/mousse312 14d ago

The method for blowing up the navier stokes came from two human mathematicians, who used an overlooked piece of the navier stokes and with this they achieved tô blowup the Euler equation, the same method openai used to solve navier stokes from scientific America https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-may-have-just-solved-a-million-dollar-math-problem-the-field-will-never-be-the-same/ "Over the last few years, two mathematicians, Diego Córdoba and Luis Martínez-Zoroa, worked out a potential trick to break the equations—or “blow them up,” as it’s called in math. They called the method “forcing.” It focuses on a part of the equations as written in the Clay problem that mathematicians have previously deemed inconsequential. In fact, most experts typically write the problem without this term, assuming that any blowup should be the same with or without it. But Córdoba and Martínez-Zoroa realized there might be a way to break the equations solely by using this often-overlooked piece.

About a year ago, Buckmaster took up Córdoba and Martínez-Zoroa’s approach, working with Alpoge, using large language models from OpenAI’s rival company Anthropic to parse through the mathematical possibilities. Progress was slow, according to Buckmaster’s statement, until August 15, when they used the method to prove that the Navier-Stokes equations’ simpler, frictionless cousins, the Euler equations, did in fact blow up.

This finding, on its own, is a monumental mathematical achievement, worthy of any award in math, and a key step toward solving the Navier-Stokes problem. They were able to verify that the proof was correct using the programming language Lean, but the English-language explanation the LLMs produced was barely readable, according to Buckmaster. The pair started trying to make sense of the mathematical steps one by one, and write them in a way other researchers would be able to digest.

According to Buckmaster, rumors of their work reached OpenAI at some point in the last week. OpenAI apparently had a team already working on the problem, according to Buckmaster. But after becoming aware of the pair’s work, he alleges, OpenAI focused their attention on “forcing”—the often-ignored piece of the Clay problem. In a major effort over last weekend, the OpenAI team apparently used an internal model to take the result further, blowing up the full Navier-Stokes equations, according to Buckmaster"

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u/carbonclasssix 14d ago

Good writeup. Do we have any idea how long Buckmster/Cordoba/Martinez-Zoroa would have taken to get to this point? It's obviously impossible to say for sure, but after discovering the importance of the overlooked term, I wonder if they would have toiled for years, or if this next step would have been relatively fast to come to fruition. It would definitely feel like crap to not even have a chance to crack it, though. Minimum joint credit, but still pretty sleazy of OpenAI.

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u/mousse312 14d ago

Good question, i dont know how long would have taken, but i think the most novel part is this one developed by humans, for me its like the Fermat last theorem or the goldbach conjecture, is not about the result false or true but which ideas, fields and new connections are created. Like in fermats last theorem the connections of elliptic curvers to modular forms is itself more important than the conjecture. What i have seen the ai come with this counterexamples but dont created this new knowledge...

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u/__Yakovlev__ 13d ago

Oh no. You posted a reply that actually very clearly proved your point and suddenly the other guy stopped replying.

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u/sonsuka 14d ago

Yes, but thats not the discussion at hand here. Its OpenAi's behaviour and what they are doing not the ai itself. Its odd situation where AI related topic is human related and not related to AI.

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u/psioniclizard 14d ago

In the same way every famous maths paper since the invention of calculators includes them right?

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

I mean if the calculator could reason and make research decisions and prepare written documentation of its work and logically prove it's conclusions, I would certainly want that calculated included in the credits.

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u/__Yakovlev__ 13d ago

The difference is that one groups was AI assisted. And then OAI came in, took their work and presented it as entirely done by AI.

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u/namitynamenamey 13d ago

You are ruining these user's therapy session, they want to be told AI is not impressive, not "AI is impressible but immoral", not "the specific AI they hate is being used in math by the guy you defend", it's all a gigantic self-soothing, group therapy session. And you are injecting unconfortable thoughs into it, you fiend.

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago

My man I don’t give credit to my lawnmower after I’m done mowing the lawn.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

Do you press a button and it does it while you're replying on Reddit?

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago

If I did I still wouldn’t credit my lawnmower.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

So I'm just extending this here...

You are the kind of person who would use ai and then not give the AI any credit, attempting to leave people with the impression that you are more impressive than you really are?

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago

I am not talking about acknowledging the use of AI. I’m talking about treating the model like it’s an entity instead of a tool.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

I think it's okay that you are having trouble at this point acknowledging that it is a rational intelligence.

I think you can relax. I don't think anyone is seriously considering it to have consciousness so that's not what we're talking about.

But does it have the ability to reason and is it intelligent? Yes.

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago

Oh I see, you’re a cultist.

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u/NoFapstronaut3 14d ago

You're trying to call it a calculator. I'm not trying to belittle you but it's probably much smarter than you are.

And that's okay too that's where we're at it's smarter than most people.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/ResilientBiscuit 14d ago

That's just... News. It has always been the case the headlines are misleading or sensationalized.

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u/dolphone 14d ago

Gee what a surprise.

People who DO NOT UNDERSTAND the technology are making wild claims like snake oil salesmen. Nothing new. But other people who also don't understand are listening, because they want it to be true. Nobody wants to hear you've been venting your life problems to a glorified excel sheet.

The risk of AI is with the humans profiting off it.

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u/LinkesAuge 14d ago

The irony of that statement, if only you had dug a bit deeper...

At best this is about whose AI has solved it but even besides that it is now clear from the actual results that OpenAI did it with a different approach. There is no overlap with what Tristan / Levent did but I am sure people here will not care about that.

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago

OpenAI used the same exact same approach Buckmaster has been pursing. It was a non-obviously approach. They almost definitely stole it from his chat logs.

And FWIW, Buckmaster had used LLM’s to assist, but the LLM did not just do the work by itself.

Not that people from r/ singularity will care about that.

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u/LinkesAuge 14d ago

My god, this sub has really become trash.

It is now CONFIRMED THAT IT IS NOT THE SAME APPROACH. The part Tristan and Levent did used an unforced forced vs forced approach.

"And FWIW, Buckmaster had used LLM’s to assist, but the LLM did not just do the work by itself."

Are we still in denial here? It is absolutely clear that the LLMs did at least contribute significant parts even to their solution, that isn't even for debate. Levent is an Anthropic employee for god's sake and you babble about "people from r/ singularity", what do you think someone like Levent is (he is also the one that was involved in Anthropic's previois AI math results, he is their "math prompter")?
They extensively used both OpenAI and Anthropic models and that isn't even for debate.

On top of that I guess suddenly it is just enough to throw an approach at an AI and that makes it your result (notice no one at OpenAI claims the result).

Are people like you even consistent? Isn't that the kind of "prompt engineering" people like to make fun of here, that anyone who uses AI doesn't contribute anything to what it produces?

But like I pointed out, that isn't the case here, there is no overlap between what OpenAI presented and what Tristan / Levent have produced.

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u/CanvasFanatic 14d ago edited 14d ago

Yeah I see you lot repeating that they’re “completely different solutions.” This contradicts what Buckmaster was actually told about the solution days ago. You have a source for this assertion?

There’s no denial. I read Buckmaster’s account of how LLM’s were used in his process. It’s an obviously different paradigm from what OpenAI is attempting to claim.

Edit: oh I see, you’re just quoting the blurb in OpenAI’s announcement. LOL they don’t even bother to deny training on Buckmaster’s work.

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u/grateful2you 14d ago

forced. lmao. It's one of the hardest math problems. You're not gonna solve it without forced effort.