AI may have just solved a million-dollar math problem. The field will never be the same

Today may go down as the biggest day in math in at least two decades, if not far longer.

In a development that crystallizes an existential shift in humankind’s oldest intellectual discipline, artificial intelligence has reportedly solved one of the six open “million-dollar” problems in mathematics. The achievement proves that the equations that govern the motion of fluids are fundamentally flawed.

“This is a Deep Blue–Kasparov moment,” wrote mathematician Tristan Buckmaster, referring to the sea change in thinking about machine intelligence that occurred when a supercomputer beat world champion Garry Kasparov at chess in the 1990s, in a statement released late on Monday. “The community needs to have serious and unhurried discussion about where to go from here.”

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

But according to Buckmaster, the proof’s origins may be murkier than they seem. In the same statement, he wrote that he and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician and an Anthropic employee, made significant progress toward the problem last month. But before the pair could publish, Buckmaster alleged in the statement, rumors of their method reached OpenAI, where researchers used the company’s large language model (LLM) to finish the job with a single prompt. The prompt “had been sent in the past few days, after information about our work had reached OpenAI,” Buckmaster alleged.