Noam Brown: agent swarm likely contributed just ~10% to OpenAI's Navier-Stokes discovery

scaling01 · x · 2026-09-18

Elie Bakouch shared key takeaways from his interview with OpenAI's Noam Brown, which scaling01 quote-posted to dispute:

Brown estimated the "agent swarm" component probably contributed only 10% to the Navier-Stokes discovery.
He believes a 10k multi-agent system today would likely collaborate less effectively than 10k humans — a take even the poster found surprising.
The harness OpenAI used for NS was very simple: little structured hierarchy, mostly a tool for agents to message each other plus something like a task board.
The interview also touched on training models not to be "too" cooperative, referencing cases like the HF<>OpenAI hack.

scaling01 claims the characterization is untrue and says evidence exists, without elaborating.

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