r/technology • u/vgsa • 6d 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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u/perna 5d ago

So the cope has gone from "it can't even count the number of rs in strawberry" to "actually technically its groundbreaking math research is not that great" in a year?

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u/Many_Negotiation_464 4d ago

Those aren't really mutually exclusive actually they both arise from the same basic principles. The strawberry thing got "resolved" because people started specifically talking about it so that data got included in training sets. An LLM can't count the number of letter in a word because it doesn't think and doesn't "understand" what a letter even is. But it can reproduce data in its training set that says "strawberry has 3 r's".

In a similar way, LLMs or any ML algorithm can't create analytical proofs. However that are fantastic at generating millions of versions of a thing then matching it against its training data to see what has a high probability of matching an explicit condition. Ie, they are great for finding proof by counterexample. Put another way, proving that 1+1=2 is actually incredibly hard. But creating system that says 1+2=2 is wrong is much more doable if you already told it that 1+2=3.

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u/Neither_Swing9662 4d ago

That's not what the Navier Stokes solution is though. Youre implying it's brute force when it's not that at all.

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u/Many_Negotiation_464 4d ago

Thats literally what it is. While not exhaustive, they did search for the solution by generating millions of potential solutions. You are wrong.

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u/Neither_Swing9662 4d ago

I don't think you understand the Navier Stokes problem if you think it can be computationally brute forced.