OpenAI's Navier-Stokes claim rocked by NYU misconduct charge

OpenAI says an internal model, described as 'significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra,' produced a roughly 100-page proof of finite-time blow-up for the forced Navier-Stokes equations in about 88 hours, using around 10,000 coordinated AI agents. As Wired reported, the announcement has been overshadowed by an authorship fight with the academics doing related, publicly verified work. Two of the AI experts in our Who's Who directory shared the Wired piece, a sign of how quickly this one is circulating.

Those academics are Tristan Buckmaster at NYU and Levent Alpöge, a mathematician at Anthropic. They posted three preprints establishing finite-time blowup with smooth forcing for the incompressible porous medium equation, the two-dimensional Boussinesq system, and the three-dimensional incompressible Euler equations, with Lean formalizations of the proofs. Fields Medalist Terence Tao praised the work.

Buckmaster's account, reported by TechCrunch, is that OpenAI's Sébastien Bubeck pressed him to drop Alpöge, an Anthropic employee, from authorship on a joint result. When he refused, Buckmaster says, Bubeck asked him: 'Why would you ruin your career?'

Bubeck has called the allegations 'false and inflammatory,' and says he tried to coordinate release of the proofs with Buckmaster and Alpöge but was rebuffed. He has separately said OpenAI's internal model solved the Euler problem independently and by different means.

The Buckmaster and Alpöge work does not solve the Navier-Stokes Millennium Problem, which additionally involves viscosity. OpenAI has not posted its 100-page proof anywhere mathematicians can check it. Clay's rules require a proposed solution to be published in a qualifying outlet, remain published for at least two years, and receive general acceptance from the global mathematics community.