201–210 of 292 posts
I am utterly fascinated by the amount of comments here from engineers that clearly have zero experience with mathematics making utter fool of themselves by claiming to know better than mathematicians what their jargon is/means, how publishing works/should work, etc… I try not to go down the route of “hn was better before!” but… jeez, do better, people. What happened to this community, there used to be some effort to…
Gell-Mann Amnesia HN version?
Proving things without comprehending them is a threat to intellectual work.
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Yeah, I don't expect them to stop, but I do think they are probably hurting themselves, as well as mathematics, by continuing do to this. Imagine if they had handled this differently and these results - still using OpenAI models - were coming from the math community. How much better the PR would have been - AI helping math/science rather than yet another story of AI harming society in some way. No doubt this is what…
If you're in OpenAI's position, the PR from the group you're disrupting is rarely relevant. People from the outside will (correctly or not) look at this as "Mathematicians don't want OpenAI to solve problems to keep their status/jobs", and you'll have as much sympathy from them as every other replaced profession in human history - very little to none. Unlike AlphaFold, this technology has the potential to wholesale r…
IMO giving a hypothetical AlphaMath to mathematicians, the same way Google gave AlphaFold to research chemists/biologists, would have resulted in far better PR, and the profit opportunity of attempting to replace the jobs of either research group is minimal.
It's downright bizarre the way companies like Anthropic (primarily), and to a lesser extent OpenAI and anyone else, are themselves pushing the narrative of this tech may kill you, will take all your jobs, etc. That may all happen, unfortunately, but being aware of that possibility you'd think these companies would be a bit more mindful of their messaging and behavior, not just go out with a scorched earth approach of "well, they are going to hate us anyway".
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Yeah, I don't expect them to stop, but I do think they are probably hurting themselves, as well as mathematics, by continuing do to this. Imagine if they had handled this differently and these results - still using OpenAI models - were coming from the math community. How much better the PR would have been - AI helping math/science rather than yet another story of AI harming society in some way. No doubt this is what…
If you're in OpenAI's position, the PR from the group you're disrupting is rarely relevant. People from the outside will (correctly or not) look at this as "Mathematicians don't want OpenAI to solve problems to keep their status/jobs", and you'll have as much sympathy from them as every other replaced profession in human history - very little to none. Unlike AlphaFold, this technology has the potential to wholesale r…
I actually don't think that current AI can replace any profession that requires human interaction over many weeks. This is because imo they lack long term planning abilities
In my opinion, I think the Clay Mathematics Institute deserves some criticism for all the drama surrounding these problems. Mathematicians know that you can make problems arbitrarily complex, and declaring problems with large prizes attached to them can lead to a lot of competition and drama. I feel that mathematics should be free from competitions and the pursuit of glory. However, after reading the open letter sign…
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OpenAI has stated that they will not claim the prize. https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/ While the scandal is still unraveling, it seems that OpenAI did a rush job to steal other mathematicians' thunder and finish the proof first. OpenAI released a statement that their work does not relate to the work of the other team, but it clearly does. They use the same niche smooth-forcing mechanism. Altman and Bu…
1) OpenAI and Buckmaster did not solve the same problem. Per https://x.com/IlinVasily29521/status/2097554700321329393 , here is a breakdown of who solved what. Tristan + Levent: 3D incompressible Euler with forcing OpenAI: 3D incompressible Euler without forcing OpenAI: Navier-Stokes with forcing No one: Navier-Stokes without forcing Euler equations = Navier-Stokes without viscosity. Forcing means external force. Abs…
It is laughable to claim they are not datamining users when datamining users is their strongest advantage over open models.
In the end, there is no reason to care about openAI or credit them with anything. Tools are not attributed, people are.
The best solution is for universities to be universities and provide llms for students and staff to use. Any university allowing students to use cloud based AI has failed.
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> Peer in peer-reviewed is a logical coherent and functional definition with answers. What is the definition? If you tell me that, then I might be able to tell you if it is logical coherent and functional, I have a PhD in computational logic.
> I have a PhD in computational logic. And you don't know how the peer-review system works? Just a hunch but Claude saying your work is "PhD level" does not count
OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes release included a Lean 4 formal proof - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49650326 - Sept 2026 (179 comments)
More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639408 - Sept 2026 (813 comments)
The Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49621697 - Sept 2026 (237 comments)
Tao: Open math problems being non-renewably mined by AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49616968 - Sept 2026 (420 comments)
On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613262 - Sept 2026 (1134 comments)
Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915 - Sept 2026 (827 comments)
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> Peer in peer-reviewed is a logical coherent and functional definition with answers. What is the definition? If you tell me that, then I might be able to tell you if it is logical coherent and functional, I have a PhD in computational logic.
Something like this sketch work for you? peer(X, 0) :- founding_peer(X). electorate(T, count ) :- peer(Y, T). support(X, T, count ) :- candidate(X), peer(Y, T), recognizes(Y, X, T+1). peer(X, T+1) :- support(X, T, Votes), electorate(T, Total), 2 * Votes > Total.
It feels like a nice post. It’s almost like we’re not supposed to celebrate the fact that mathematics is accelerating.
Wait, I thought the provenance of the proof is still disputed? There's a mathematician in NY saying he used OpenAI to develop his Navier-Stokes ideas. And OpenAI's proof is suspiciously similar. At this point, how can we tell whether AI is improving or it's just reappropriating its users work? It's probably a bit of both. But still, thick milky.
This has a few practical implications: First of all, if you are in the target group of the marketing material, be wary. While these things can do non-trivial stuff, the amount of magic is being grossly over-stated. But also, when several of the big results have indeed been reappropriating the work of others; when the companies fail to provide proper attribution (the NS case in particular is laughable) and present the results as the models' own work, that's plagiarism.