OpenAI says it cracked decades-old math problem — but professor claims they cribbed his work and then threatened him

OpenAI stunned the mathematics world when it announced Tuesday that its artificial intelligence model cracked a legendary math problem left unsolved for nearly a century in just 88 hours.

But an NYU academic has chimed in — saying the AI giant tried to strong-arm him into helping the bots solve the dizzyingly complex equation, and may have cribbed the work he had already done.

The ChatGPT creator on Tuesday claimed its AI had solved a so-called Millennium Prize Problem — one of seven famous unsolved math problems designated in 2000 by the Clay Mathematics Institute, which offers a $1 million bounty for devising the correct solution to each.

Currently in dispute is the claim over who solved what is known as the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, which asks “whether smooth, three-dimensional fluid flows can always maintain smooth behavior or if they can develop a singularity with infinite velocity,” according to OpenAI.

However professor Tristan Buckmaster, a British-Australian researcher who trained in Germany, has come forward alleging OpenAI may have copied his work after asking him to collaborate — with one of the company’s scientists allegedly warning he might “ruin his career” if he refused.