AI rumors spark frenzy over two Millennium Prize Problems

This week OpenAI claimed to crack one of the complex Millennium Prize Problems, Navier Stokes, by using artificial intelligence.

The ChatGPT maker touted that about 10,000 AI agents worked simultaneously on the Millennium Prize Problem and reached a solution in 88 hours after an effort that cost millions of dollars.

This is the math puzzle that human experts failed to crack for more than decades. OpenAI claimed that this proof suggests that such an equation can be cracked over time.

When this breakthrough was announced, it took the internet by storm. Even this breakthrough sparked dispute about who will get the rightful credit as NYU professor Tristan Buckmaster and Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge alleged that OpenAI may have built upon their unpublished work without proper credit.

Now another rumour is making round on the X platform related to tech companies making efforts to solve two other Millennium Prize Problems.

For the unversed, the Clay Mathematics Institute designated seven complex mathematical problems as the Millennium Prize Problems in the year 2000. It includes:

• Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture
• Hodge conjecture
• Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness
• P versus NP problem
• Poincaré conjecture
• Riemann hypothesis
• Yang–Mills existence and mass gap

Out of these seven, the Poincaré conjecture is officially the only one to have been solved in the 2000s.

A post on X claimed that OpenAI is nearing a proof for the Hodge Conjecture, while OpenAI or Anthropic eyes the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.

“I am told the Hodge Conjecture is very close to being verified by OpenAI, and that one of OpenAI or Anthropic is also close to solving Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer. The race to be 'next' behind the scenes is unlike anything I've had described to me before,” the post reads.

“If true - and it may not be, given the scale of the rumour mill right now - it could mean 3 Millennium Problems fall in the space of a month. Crazy times.”

The rumors went viral on the internet. Some users expressed concerns over growing dominance of AI over the mathematical domain and some showed skepticism.

One user showed concern, “What does this mean for the mathematicians who devoted their entire lives to solving these problems? They won't be remembered. Only the AI will be. Or perhaps, from here on, the very notion of a "great unsolved problem" becomes meaningless.”

Another one wrote while questioning the authenticity of rumours, “In what context would an insider whisper to someone else "one of these two labs is close to BSD," instead of saying which? What would close even mean for BSD? Remember the original Navier-Stokes rumor (Ant did it, plus Hodge) was wrong but vagueness obscured its implausibility.”

“It would be mind blowing if an AI proof of Hodge is a general theory explaining why all Hodge classes are algebraic,” the third one commented.

However, these are just rumours for now as there is no confirmation from OpenAI or Anthropic.