On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#421

Post by olalonde » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

20k wrote: post #352

olalonde wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing the devil's advocate here but it's true that OpenAI didn't have to make those offers.

They kind of did though, they were hoping to keep the fact that they may well have plagiarised these researchers unpublished work quiet. They did not want this to turn into a scandal about the fact that they appear to be training on prompts without consent It makes a certain amount of sense. The internet data is too polluted with AI usage now to be useful, so the only AI free new data source is the prompts people fee…

OpenAI claims the data contamination issue only surfaced after they proactively reached out to Buckmaster and Alpöge to coordinate a joint release. They also say that even if there was some contamination, the underlying proofs diverge substantially:

> Our effort began on September 1st after hearing a rumor which we later realized was related to Levent Alpöge, an Anthropic employee, and Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU. After the completion of our full project and Lean verification (on September 6th), believing from the rumor they also had a solution of Navier–Stokes, we reached out to them to offer a concurrent release of our result and to recognize their priority in a joint announcement. At that point we found out that they had a resolution of the forced Euler problem. In these discussions we offered them visibility into all of the prompts we used and later to see the proof. We recognize the priority of their work on forced Euler and congratulate them on their remarkable mathematical achievement.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#422

Post by whythismatters » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

denverllc wrote: post #182

colesantiago wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the rage? Weather an individual or a company found the solution (stolen or not) they both used AI to come get the solution. We have AGI and the intelligence abundance is going to be amazing for everyone in the future.

> Why the rage? I think it's the dishonesty, the threats of "destroying the career" of one of the mathematicians, and the request that one of the authors disavow *the other individual he was working with for the last 1-2 years* so he could claim the Clay prize as part of OpenAI. It doesn't surprise me that OpenAI's team were surprised he'd turn it down; it shows that they just assume everyone else is as slimy as they…

>slimy

I can't put my finger on it, but there's something off about this article, e.g. glossing over the opportunism (acting on "rumors"), drive-by claim about "strict safeguards [...] including monitoring and isolation", high horse attitude (we gave the guy a chance, we don't care about 1M USD, and while you fools are complaining we just tick this box and continue the pursuit of our noble goals for the benefit of humanity). I don't like it.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#423

Post by hughw » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:12 PM UTC

amluto wrote: post #173

peri-cl wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buckmaster: > "I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to, our sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our drafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not look up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not get an answer." OpenAI (i.e. this OP): > "While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helpe…

> While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models . That’s a bizarre statement. Their website says: > Services for individuals, such as ChatGPT and Codex > When you use our services for individuals such as ChatGPT and Codex, we may use your content to train our models. > You can opt out of training through our privacy portal by clicking on…

Looking forward to my fourteen cents from the future class action lawsuit.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#424

Post by andrepd » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:12 PM UTC

apical_dendrite wrote: post #271

colinhb wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The allegations of contamination (using Tristan and Levent's work) aren't very well evidenced, but this behavior by OpenAI (from the authors' statement) makes them seem like the bad guys: > I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin…

Their own tweets are also pretty eyebrow-raising: > One option we discussed was that Tristan could be the lead author on a rewrite of OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes proof. It is in that context that I said “it would be simpler if Levent was not an Anthropic employee” because I felt it would be inappropriate for an Anthropic employee to author OpenAI’s work. Why would you offer another researcher the lead authorship on your g…

Holy late capitalism. Everything revolves around line-go-up, and sociopaths rule the show. These people cannot even collaborate like civilised scientists on one of the most famous open problems in mathematics?

“It would be simpler if Levent was not an Anthropic employee” I cannot believe this shit.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#425

Post by hughw » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

fph wrote: post #415

amluto wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models . That’s a bizarre statement. Their website says: > Services for individuals, such as ChatGPT and Codex > When you use our services for individuals such as ChatGPT and Codex, we may use your content to train our models. > You can opt out of training through our privacy portal by clicking on…

Do we have a first-hand confirmation that Buckmaster and/or Alpoge opted out? At this point it seems important information.

Also highlights that it ought to be opt-in

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#426

Post by red75prime » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #208

nradov wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it spying? I think this usage is disclosed in their terms of service.

If it happened it's plagiraism. Consent to see data isn't consent to claim priority.

Establishing plagiarism requires sufficient similarity between works. Training data changing a model’s weights in some direction, and the model then producing a different solution, hardly qualifies.

But, yeah, priority is much more finicky. The Newton/Leibniz drama was quite something.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#427

Post by simianwords » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

20k wrote: post #311

aizk wrote: post #52

People had joked a couple years ago "Well if they solve a Millenium problem it's AGI"... Well here we are.

Yeah well, its easy to do if you steal someone elses work and then try to threaten them into staying quiet about it Edit: OpenAI have now admitted they were training on prompts at the time they made their breakthrough: https://mastodon.social/@tristanbuckmaster/11723647135247030...

what's there to admit? they always said they do it and there's a way to opt out. you are making it sound more dramatic than it is.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#428

Post by andrepd » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

igleria wrote: post #227

Maxious wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI version of events conceed some of the words alleged to have been used may have been used https://x.com/sama/status/2097385167002415140 https://x.com/SebastienBubeck/status/2097379411691516310

Interesting that they quote the mathematician directly: “there is nothing you can do, I simply do not trust you” but then they proceed to NOT quote themselves themselves verbatim: "I deeply apologize for this extremely poor choice of words, it is the opposite of what I was trying to convey."

> "I deeply apologize for this extremely poor choice of words, it is the opposite of what I was trying to convey."

The AI-isms are seeping into their speech :)

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#429

Post by highfrequency » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

> While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models

This is the crux of it. If Tristan's work and insights were not used to train OpenAI models, then this just looks like a case of hyper-competitive academic sniping that has been going on for decades (check out Watson and Crick!) accelerated by AI as a tool.

But there is one huge question: did Tristan opt out of model training for his ChatGPT and Codex sessions? If the answer is no, then this seems fair game. If the answer is yes, then OpenAI's ambiguity is strongly suggestive that opting out does not mean what they imply it means.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#430

Post by dakolli » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

Fordec wrote: post #378

10xDev wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compute will always be the bottleneck even if this were true.

If humans can figure out to optimize to circumvent bottlenecks, I have no doubt each new bottleneck will also get routed around, just now automated.

How do you automate the mines to get the raw materials to make the compute from, and build additional fabs that take a almost a decade to stand up. You're actually delusional.