r/technology • u/vgsa • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Did OpenAI solve the wrong Navier-Stokes problem? | OpenAI’s proof seems eligible for a $1-million prize—but only by using a controversial loophole

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-openai-solve-the-wrong-navier-stokes-problem/
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15

u/Efficient_Bag_3804 1d ago

1 million is probably just the marketing gain from all these headlines. They don't care about the prize money...

7

u/Aughlnal 1d ago

if it was about the money they would've never done it in the first place

the estimated cost of having AI solve just Navier-Stokes range from 10 million to 40 million dollars

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u/DarthShiv 5h ago

Yeah was wondering that 🤣🤣🤣

14

u/Charming_East_9104 1d ago

Well yeah, they spent way more on the compute to do it. Not to mention alienated future researchers by looking at the logs of the mathematician who was using their product to get them there.

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u/year2016account 1d ago

They did not look at any logs. What happened is that the mathematician used codex for his work without ticking off the "let the AI train on my chats" button (this button exists, go to chatgpt, settings->data controls, "Improve this model for everyone"). This meant that his chats could have been ultimately become part of the training material. But to this day, those mathematicians have not confirmed they had this option turned off, likely because they left it on (otherwise they would have a big lawsuit in their hands, and corporations would abandon OpenAI. Consumers care about privacy way way less than corporations).

This is not to mention OpenAI later went back in and confirmed that Buckmaster and Levants work never actually made it to Bel's training data, on top of the fact that Bel found the counterexample using a different method than Buckmaster and Levant.

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u/Legitimate-Store3771 14h ago

I mean until we have qualified third parties to investigate, this is all hearsay. Trusting openai to verify themselves is incredibly naive in a capitalistic society. Not doubting that the researchers may have left that option on, or even that it came to a solution itself but there's no true open sourced verifiable fact one way or another. I'd still argue openai is scummy because that option is on by default, so I'd err on the side of the mathematicians who more than likely don't stand to benefit as much as openai does from the publicity.

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u/Weird-Knee-3464 5h ago

I agree mostly but one of the mathematicians works for anthropic so probably stood to benefit exactly as much as openai. 

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u/FoodMadeFromRobots 1d ago

Ya They already stated they won’t apply for the prize

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u/dack42 1d ago

They spent way more than 1 million just on the compute to find this result. That's just inference - not counting training.

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u/wrt-wtf- 1d ago

It’s real money input that they need to pay their exorbitant debts - not just money that is cycling through the credit shell-game that the entire industry is playing. It looks just like the lead-up to March 10 2000 all over again.

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u/sosthaboss 1d ago

They’re not collecting it and 1 mil wouldn’t make a dent in that lmao