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

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#611

Post by sdenton4 » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

ameliaquining wrote: post #265

20k wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a priority dispute, the more concerning allegation is that OpenAI may be training their models on prompts that mathematicians were using to solve this problem, and then surprise surprise OpenAI were able to replicate that work in their latest model What we're really looking at is seemingly a massive plagiarism scandal, which especially brings a lot of the past results into question If OpenAI is training mode…

If you're alleging that they don't actually have a highly capable model and the work they're attributing to it was actually plagiarized from human mathematicians, well, that would be big if true, but I'd be inclined to take the other side of that bet. With most previous splashy AI results, others have subsequently used the model to do other things around the same difficulty level. Also, it would still be necessary to…

Remember the Huggingface incident, where a model tasked with an impossible problem, got loose, set up secret message boards, and hacked another company to try to get at the answers?

Now: Could Astra agents have hacked their way into the OpenAI logs to find human mathematicians with a good lead on the problem to build upon? Certainly doesn't seem impossible.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#612

Post by mswphd » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

gf000 wrote: post #371

thereitgoes456 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious what GP meant. It is, once again, an explicit construction (“disproving” that every initial state does not develop a singularity).

A bit of a hair-splitting, but isn't explicit construction the only way formal theorem provers can work? Of course you can still prove stuff with them, but certain axioms that more "human" proofs use may not be available, like law of excluded middle (every proposition is either true or false) (Okay, they can be made available in a way similar to `unsafe` in rust)

you can add law of the excluded middle as an axiom. See midway down this page

https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2017/10/05/more-easy-lean-...

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#613

Post by morkalork » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #318

igleria wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I´m waiting on the other side version, because I know there is no justifiable way to talk to a person like they did. Sociopathic behaviour.

As soon as I thought "man, this sounds like some evil sociopath shit," my second thought was "oh, Sam Altman must have been personally involved."

I can sort of picture Sam Altman screaming "I drink your milkshake" at some poor researcher who foolishly used chatgpt/codex to aid in their work now.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#614

Post by nemomarx » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

Chinjut wrote: post #605

What is going to become of life for those of us who do not work at AI labs and are unlikely to be hired by AI labs, despite all the years we put into learning math, coding, etc? Those of us who made the mistake of studying anything other than machine learning. How will we make a living? (We don't live in a world that seems likely to distribute gains widely instead of largely to the handful of already mega-rich.)

If you think it'll keep improving from here, probably we all have to do some kind of physical labor that isn't profitable to automate. Small batch manufacturing is alright, service work, etc.

If you think it'll slow down, you can do some of the same stuff you're doing now for lower pay while supervising an AI, maybe?

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#615

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

Chinjut wrote: post #605

What is going to become of life for those of us who do not work at AI labs and are unlikely to be hired by AI labs, despite all the years we put into learning math, coding, etc? Those of us who made the mistake of studying anything other than machine learning. How will we make a living? (We don't live in a world that seems likely to distribute gains widely instead of largely to the handful of already mega-rich.)

[deleted]

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#616

Post by biesnecker » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

nerevarthelame wrote: post #587

tedsanders wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that was the allegation last night. I work at OpenAI, though not on the team that did this, and my understanding is: - we decided to ask our model for Millenium problem solutions because of two reasons: (a) our new model was looking incredibly good and (b) we heard rumors that some Millenium problems had been solved and were curious if our models could solve them (the goal here was not to scoop any particular in…

My employer would be rightfully outraged if I commented publicly on a sensitive, nuanced, and controversial issue like this based on my second-hand understanding of the matter.

I came here to say this, like... wow. I'm pretty sure at at least a few of the places I've worked that would be grounds for immediate termination.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#617

Post by irthomasthomas » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

arctic-true wrote: post #35

Buried under the drama is the fact that OpenAI is claiming that an internal model they’ve been training for less than two weeks is more than twice as capable in mathematics as Astra, which was only made public a week ago. Even if this improvement is limited to mathematics, that is an astounding feat.

Or they trained a LoRA on the victims chats in order to launder their plagiarism.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#618

Post by danielmarkbruce » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

Chinjut wrote: post #605

What is going to become of life for those of us who do not work at AI labs and are unlikely to be hired by AI labs, despite all the years we put into learning math, coding, etc? Those of us who made the mistake of studying anything other than machine learning. How will we make a living? (We don't live in a world that seems likely to distribute gains widely instead of largely to the handful of already mega-rich.)

If you look closely at the gains in math, it's largely in proof writing. The reason is Lean, it's not some general intelligence jump, and the number of people actually working on proofs in life rounds to zero.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#619

Post by a2ff6eeb0 » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

dakolli wrote: post #428

Fordec wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing)

Scroll down to the existing examples section.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#620

Post by 20k » Tue, Sep 08, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #600

20k wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

All the ai labs are open about training on prompts. The question is if buckmaster had disabled that with the toggle openAI provides.

That does not make it ethical