Sam Altman said on the Cheeky Pint podcast that OpenAI will keep publishing AI-generated solutions to unsolved math problems, despite backlash from mathematicians. He acknowledged disruption to the field but argued the world benefits from understanding how the universe works, while saying he has 'empathy for the method' used by critics. This follows controversy over OpenAI's Navier-Stokes solution, produced using 10,000 AI agents over 88 hours at roughly $10 million cost, which one mathematician said relied on his unreleased research.
futurism.com
· 2026-10-31
OpenAI's September 8 announcement of a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem included two versions of its proof: one in natural language with mathematical symbols, and one formalised in the Lean programming language for automated verification. A team led by Anders Hansen and Fabian Circelli at the University of Cambridge says these two versions do not actually match, meaning the Lean code may not faithfully represent the natural-language argument.
newscientist.com
· 2026-10-09
Mathematicians including Tristan Buckmaster of New York University say that after working for about a year on a fluid-dynamics puzzle related to the Navier-Stokes problem, OpenAI announced its agents had solved it the day after Buckmaster posted his own progress. Scientists say this is one of at least two recent cases in five weeks where AI companies reached or announced results on questions researchers were already pursuing, prompting some to limit sharing unpublished work with AI tools.
nature.com
· 2026-10-08
NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster, who publicly alleged OpenAI's Codex used his unpublished work to solve the Navier-Stokes problem before he could, says he continues relying on Codex and Anthropic's Claude for his research despite the dispute. OpenAI investigated the claim and stated Buckmaster's prompts could not have influenced its system or training, while Buckmaster maintains the episode shows AI's growing reach into frontier mathematics.
wired.com
· 2026-09-19
OpenAI announced on 8 September that one of its AI models had solved a major open problem in fluid dynamics, the Navier-Stokes puzzle. The claim provoked backlash after researchers, including Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge, said they had already been working on the same problem using AI tools from OpenAI and Anthropic and were tipped off before the announcement. Twenty-five Fields Medal winners have since signed an open letter warning that AI involvement in mathematics raises serious plagiarism and credit-attribution concerns.
nature.com
· 2026-09-17
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