OpenAI claims its AI has produced a singular solution to Navier-Stokes equations

OpenAI reported that its newest, still-unreleased AI system produced a candidate solution to the Navier-Stokes equations, showing a vortex that spirals inward and causes pressure, velocity and other quantities to diverge, thereby violating the smoothness condition of the Millennium Prize problem. The effort involved many AI agents that exchanged millions of messages while handling literature review, hypothesis generation, mathematical detail and counter-argument.

The solution has been encoded in the Lean proof assistant, yet it must be published in a scholarly journal and survive a two-year review period before the prize can be awarded. Critics including Tristan Buckmaster of New York University and Levent Alpöge, formerly of Harvard, suspect OpenAI may have drawn on their earlier AI-aided research without proper credit, and OpenAI has declined to disclose the prompts used. The episode raises broader questions about the role of AI in mathematical research and whether machines can truly surpass human insight.