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Crystal ball: OpenAI has released a paper claiming that an unreleased AI model solved the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize Problems. The company said the system reached its result in 88 hours by coordinating as many as 10,000 AI agents and producing a formal proof in Lean.
Mathematicians outside the company will now review the paper. If the proof holds up, it could show that AI systems can help solve some of mathematics' hardest open problems, rather than simply produce convincing-looking answers.
The Navier-Stokes equations describe how fluids move. They are used in weather forecasting, aerodynamics, and other areas of fluid mechanics. The Millennium problem asks whether the equations always yield smooth solutions in three dimensions or whether, under certain conditions, they can develop a singularity – a point at which the mathematical model breaks down.
