OpenAI Claims Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Solution via Agents, Aero Prof Calls It Overblown
GaryMarcus · x · 2026-09-09
- OpenAI announced that a group of agents running on a next-gen model (claimed more capable than GPT-6 Astra) produced a solution to the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, about whether smooth 3D fluid motion can break down — unresolved for 90 years.
- Aerospace engineering professor DrChrisCombs pushed back: "solved Navier-Stokes" posts are incorrect and overblown. What was potentially shown is a narrow result — that a perfectly smooth, incompressible, finite-energy initial condition could produce a singularity, with assumptions piled on assumptions.
- He notes there is no general closed-form solution to N-S and never was; the result is a mathematical curiosity that could matter to mathematicians but changes nothing about how N-S are used in practice, where useful exact solutions under proper boundary conditions already exist.
Related event: From IMO Gold to Millennium Problems: AI's Rapid Math Ascent(219 posts)→
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