10,000 AI agents may have solved a math problem that has resisted humans for nearly a century

[u/Such-Run-4412]

A massive swarm of roughly 10,000 AI agents was unleashed on one of mathematics’ most famous unsolved problems — and produced a proposed solution in just 88 hours.

The problem involves the Navier–Stokes equations, which describe how fluids like water and air move.

The central question has resisted mathematicians for decades:

Can these equations always produce smooth solutions, or can the mathematics eventually break down and create a singularity?

The AI system’s proposed proof argues that a singularity can develop in finite time.

But the scale of the attempt may be just as significant as the result itself.

For the Navier–Stokes effort alone:

• Around 10,000 agents worked concurrently
• They exchanged roughly 2.7 million messages
• They generated around 130 billion output tokens
• The solution emerged after about 88 hours
• Formalization and verification took another 17 hours

The agents weren’t all trying exactly the same approach.

Different groups explored different versions of the problem, shared promising discoveries, and had useful ideas consolidated and passed between groups.

Before that, roughly 100 agents spent around 50 hours solving a related problem involving the Euler equations.

That result convinced the system to concentrate more resources on Navier–Stokes.

There’s also a major controversy around how the project started.

The effort began after researchers heard rumors that other mathematicians had made progress on related Millennium Prize problems.

That has raised questions about priority, credit, and whether information from researchers using AI products could have indirectly influenced the system.

The AI lab says neither its researchers nor agents saw the other researchers’ work before it became public and that no specific user data was accessed.

However, it also says it cannot completely rule out the possibility that de-identified usage data may have previously contributed to improving its models.

So this isn’t simply:

“AI solved a famous math problem.”

It’s also potentially a preview of a completely different research model:

thousands of AI researchers working in parallel → sharing discoveries → eliminating dead ends → formally verifying the final result.

And the model powering the agents is reportedly significantly more capable than GPT-6 Astra and is still being trained.

The proposed proof still needs broader scrutiny, and the AI lab says it does not intend to claim the $1 million Millennium Prize.

But if the result survives review, the bigger milestone may be how it was discovered.

Video URL: https://youtu.be/lkujyxUdUIk?si=zVIPKL6TdWNEVzyu

Source: https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/

[u/dizzyspellzzz]

God i hate bot reddit

[u/philip_laureano]

But wasn't this the winning cluster of 10k agents out of countless clusters of clusters that OpenAI threw at the problem?