OpenAI model's PDE proof compiles in Lean; researcher likens fuss to whining over Perelman

RexDouglass · x · 2026-09-15

Mathematician Scott Armstrong pushes back on criticism of OpenAI's model-generated PDE proof: yes, the paper isn't polished, but he finds the outrage overblown. The problem had stumped the field for 100 years, with most top PDE analysts having tried and failed — and OpenAI's model produced a proof that actually compiles in Lean.

He argues that's insanely valuable even if a team needs a year to rewrite it readably (he expects far less), citing Perelman's Poincaré proof: a bare sketch posted to arXiv that took the community 4-5 years to decode, with nobody claiming it "set back differential geometry."

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