OpenAI Cracks 90-Year-Old Maths Problem in 88 Hours

OpenAI says it has found a solution to a decades-old advanced maths problem in a matter of hours using a new artificial intelligence (AI) model and thousands of AI bots.

The ChatGPT-maker said on Tuesday that by focusing a group of roughly 10,000 AI agents, or AI bots that undertake tasks somewhat autonomously, it solved a notoriously difficult maths problem in just 88 hours.

The problem was part of the Navier-Stokes equations, which concern how fluids move. For 90 years important aspects of the problems have lacked a proof, the argument underlying a correct math equation.

OpenAI called the solution which it found a "milestone" and evidence that AI tools are improving quickly.

OpenAI's solution has yet to be verified independently or publicly accepted by The Clay Mathematics Institute, a maths organisation based in the US which runs the Millennium Prize that offers big money to the first to solve certain mathematical conundrums.

But the company's claim has already sparked a backlash.

Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematics professor at New York University, said on Tuesday that he and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician working for OpenAI rival Anthropic, had also been working on solving the problem.

The duo had been using OpenAI's tool Codex in their work. But Buckmaster said that on 3 September, he found out that "information about our progress had been passed to OpenAI".

- Author: Kali Hays, BBC

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