OpenAI's NS math result reportedly took $15M of compute; efficiency questioned
rbhar90 · x · 2026-09-14
Robert Bhargava, processing OpenAI's claimed NS mathematics result, notes one stat: OpenAI threw roughly $15M of compute at the problem.
His open questions:
- The breakthrough seems to have already been made by human mathematicians; in another universe, could $15M funding human mathematicians have solved it instead?
- The hard part is unknown denominators — how many problems did OpenAI try that failed? Citing his DeepRetro paper's 8% success rate for reaction step prediction, he back-of-envelope estimates $150M in failed millennium problem attempts.
Conclusion: still very impressive, but potentially dramatically less compute-efficient than funding human mathematicians.
Related event: OpenAI Claims 10,000 Agents Solved Navier-Stokes Problem in 88 Hours(11 posts)→
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