Tao weighs in as Anthropic rumored to have solved a Millennium Prize Problem
lukaszkaiser · x · 2026-09-08
A rumor is circulating (per Andrew Curran, unconfirmed) that an Anthropic frontier model may have solved the Navier-Stokes problem as posed on the Clay Millennium challenges. Fields Medalist Terence Tao responded hours later with a nuanced take: a problem valuable for humans to solve—with the insights and motivation that human reasoning generates—may be worth far less if solved by machine, since a solution's value lies in the process, not just the destination. Even if real, the economic ROI is unclear beyond demonstrating raw power on a hard unbounded task; the bigger prize is machines developing genuinely creative research ability.
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