A panel of mathematicians at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany clashed over OpenAI's claim that it deployed 10,000 AI agents to solve the Navier-Stokes existence-and-smoothness problem, one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's seven Millennium Prize Problems.

The claim, made Sept. 8, was contested by mathematicians Tristan Buckmaster and Levent Alpöge, who alleged OpenAI raced to scoop their roughly year-long work and that an OpenAI representative threatened them not to go public. Columbia University professor Michael Harris, who broke the story on his Substack, described such conduct as "predatory behavior" and called for a regulatory framework to protect mathematics.

Jacob Tsimerman, a University of Toronto professor who joined OpenAI as an AI safety researcher, said the achievement's significance was being buried, adding that if value is placed on new mathematics, "that seems like a golden age." 2018 Fields Medalist Peter Scholze dismissed the announcement as "some kind of PR," arguing the Millennium problems aim to build human understanding. Panelists said AI's pace made predictions impossible.

Source: Llive Science