OpenAI's thousands of agents solved Navier-Stokes; mathematicians worry brute force erases the art
nordicinst · x · 2026-09-28
WIRED examines AI's disruption of mathematics after OpenAI claimed to solve the decades-old Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem using thousands of agents.
The piece argues math has always resembled art: as G.H. Hardy wrote, mathematicians are "makers of patterns," relying on deliberate, creative exploration. OpenAI's brute-force approach shortcuts that process, and mathematicians like Juspreet Singh Sandhu warn that—as musicians and artists already experienced—this threatens to undermine human understanding of the discipline.
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