NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster, who publicly alleged OpenAI's Codex used his unpublished work to solve the Navier-Stokes problem before he could, says he continues relying on Codex and Anthropic's Claude for his research despite the dispute.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
An AI system built by OpenAI reportedly produced a proof resolving a case of the Navier-Stokes blowup problem, one of the seven Millennium Prize problems, by constructing a counterexample rather than new theoretical machinery. The work built partly on prior human research, including contributions from mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpoge, and marks the first Millennium problem tackled by an AI attempting all seven in parallel.
logangraves.com
· 2026-09-17
OpenAI announced on September 8, 2026 that an AI system had produced a solution to the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the seven unsolved Millennium Prize Problems. The claim triggered disputes over how much credit belongs to the machine versus human mathematicians involved, with some drawing parallels to Deep Blue's chess victory over Kasparov. Philosophers Silvia De Toffoli and Eamon Duede argue mathematicians should resist treating their field as a 'game' that AI can simply win or end.
terrytao.wordpress.com
· 2026-09-13
OpenAI says it has solved a Millennium Prize-level math problem, extending a string of high-profile claims in mathematics. Researchers including Tristan Buckmaster and Andreas Thom say the company has been vague about whether their own prior work, done through OpenAI's Codex tool, fed into its results. OpenAI denies this, insisting Buckmaster's recent prompts could not have influenced the system's training.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-12
Twenty-five Fields Medal winners signed an open letter warning that AI labs, especially OpenAI, are racing to claim credit for solving famous math problems without proper verification or acknowledgment of human collaborators. The dispute intensified after NYU's Tristan Buckmaster alleged OpenAI pressured him to omit credit to an Anthropic-affiliated collaborator, and OpenAI subsequently pulled its sponsorship from a CalTech math event following backlash from researchers there.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-11
OpenAI announced its AI resolved a long-standing open question about the Navier-Stokes equations, one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize Problems, claiming it did so within days using roughly 10,000 agents. Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster disputes the credit, saying he and Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge had already developed the key approach before OpenAI learned of it and rushed to finish the proof over a weekend.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-09-09
NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster alleges OpenAI accelerated its own Navier-Stokes work after learning a rival team using Anthropic's Claude was nearing a solution, and suspects OpenAI's Codex tool may have drawn on his team's draft sessions. Buckmaster says he was offered two credit-sharing arrangements, both of which he rejected, including one that would have excluded his collaborator Levent Alpöge from a paper. OpenAI researcher Sebastien Bubeck and CEO Sam Altman have publicly disputed parts of Buckmaster's account, and OpenAI says it won't seek the $1 million prize tied to the problem.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-08
Tristan Buckmaster of NYU announced preliminary proofs on a major unsolved math problem, developed with Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge using Codex and Claude models. Buckmaster alleges that details of their unpublished progress leaked to OpenAI, which then claimed to have produced a full proof using a large team and heavy computing resources shortly afterward. OpenAI's math lead Sebastian Bubeck disputes the characterization, calling the claims false and promising a fuller response.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-08
OpenAI claims its internal AI model, paired with 10,000 concurrent agents, solved the century-old Navier-Stokes equation, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems worth $1 million. However, NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster says he and Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge had been developing a nearly identical proof using OpenAI's Codex tool, and he suspects OpenAI may have drawn on their unpublished work without clear confirmation from the company.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-08
OpenAI announced that an AI model produced a Lean-verified solution to a key case of the 200-year-old Navier-Stokes equation, one of the Clay Millennium Prize problems, after running over a thousand agents for more than 50 hours at a cost of millions of dollars in compute. The announcement came shortly after mathematician Tristan Buckmaster and Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge posted their own related advances, and Buckmaster has accused OpenAI of rushing to claim credit after learning of their progress.
wired.com
· 2026-09-08
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