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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25576 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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Navier-Stokes Millenium Problem Solved by GPT

OpenAI says they solved the Navier-Stokes Millenium Prize problem with an internal model that is more powerful than GPT6, so a GPT 7 candidate or something close. OpenAI has been on fire lately really casting a shadow on Anthropic. First the hugging face incident, now the first to crack the Millenium prize problems.

As for the solution to the problem, they are claiming that smoothness is disproved and that the equations do break down.

A fundamental open question for these dynamical equations has been whether the continuum approximation of the fluid can break down. Specifically, can the Navier–Stokes equations for a three-dimensional incompressible fluid with constant density develop a “singularity,” even when the motion starts smoothly? Here, a singularity means the dynamics lead to speeds in the fluid growing without bound within a finite amount of time. The development of a singularity would have to happen despite the presence of viscosity, which tends to smooth out motion. Because a real fluid cannot move infinitely fast, this would mark a breakdown in how the equations model the fluid. To continue modeling the system, one would then need to track the behaviour of each particle individually.

They say that the equation can develop a singularity, which apparently means it is not a perfect model.

This proof, produced by an internal OpenAI system, shows that the dynamics of the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion can develop a singularity in finite time.

This is very exciting to me as I believe it to be the first scientific result of an AI model. Previous results have been basically irrelevant to the sciences. However, this result is of course still completely symbolic in nature, which is not surprising because LLMs are not embodied enough to collect data and analyze it autonomously.

While they are generating amazing PR recently, I will say GPT-6 is somewhat disappointing for coding. It is not the same leap that 5.5 to 5.6 sol was. It would appear that the models are getting better at running very long context chains while efficiency improvements and refinements in lower level tasks are lacking. Still, it's great work from OpenAI and it's plausible to me that if there's no singularity in general by 2030, there will be for mathematicians. They will no longer be meaningful for producing math, rather they will only be humans who understand it.

At this point the AI doubters should be eating a double serving of Crow. And the best thing about it all is how this is the worst AI will ever be.

In other news, OpenAI released GPT Image 2.5 today as well, representing yet another significant advance in AI generated images. I'd feel bad for the human artists etc., except the've been dead for over a year at this point and we might as well have their eventual replacement AI be as good as possible.

  • -15

except the've been dead for over a year at this point

What does “dead” mean? Lots of artists still employed at video game and animation studios, lots of artists still taking commissions on patreon and the like, etc.

I’m not trying to be snarky here, but as the claims start getting more insistent and extravagant — “AGI is here”, “AGI has actually been here for a while already”, “X profession is dead” — it’s only fair that those claims start being supported with significant real world impact.

What does “dead” mean? Lots of artists still employed at video game and animation studios, lots of artists still taking commissions on patreon and the like, etc.

It is already a dead career. Just one example: email as technology was invented in 1970s. By late 1990s the email was basically default communication option for businesses. But it took another two decades for paperless office to become reality. I remember stories even in 2010 when there were people literally printing emails and creating paper folders from that. It all ultimately stopped probably after COVID as the electronic communication finally got accepted even by most backward companies.

The AI will be much more quick. All the infrastructure is already there. People are used to digital communication, they are used to outsourcing from god forsaken countries and all that. In a sense it does not matter if you outsourced your art design to somebody living 1000 miles away with whom you communicate via chat, or even in India. It is a very small step to outsource it to to OpenAI, iterate on the design via chat or voice session and get the product. Maybe I am wrong and it will not take 5 years, but maybe 10 or 15 years. But the writing is on the wall.

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