OpenAI forms independent mathematics advisory group
OpenAI has enlisted nine mathematicians, including Edward Witten and Timothy Gowers, for an independent advisory group at the Institute for Advanced Study, alongside an unverified claim that an internal model resolved Navier–Stokes.
OpenAI said in a post that on August 28 it began training a new internal model that has since resolved the Navier–Stokes problem and "more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics," a pace it said has surprised mathematicians inside the company. No paper, proof, preprint, or model name accompanies the claim, and no third party has verified it.
The concrete, checkable part of the announcement is the advisory group. Hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study, its initial members are François Charles (ENS-PSL), Camillo De Lellis (IAS), Timothy Gowers (Collège de France, Cambridge), Martin Hairer (EPFL, Imperial College London), Nikhil Srivastava (Berkeley), Ulrike Tillmann (Oxford), Ravi Vakil (Stanford), Edward Witten (IAS) and Melanie Matchett Wood (Harvard).
OpenAI says the group will advise on reviewing emerging results, assessing their significance, coordinating their dissemination, and applying academic and professional standards, as well as on how its tools can support research and teaching. Members are unpaid, may change their own membership, may publish advice OpenAI did not request, and may comment publicly on OpenAI's impact on mathematics. One boundary is stated explicitly: the group will not advise OpenAI on how to pace its internal progress in mathematics.
OpenAI framed the move as a response to criticism, citing the open letter "A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics," in which mathematicians object to treating open problems as a benchmark. It described the group as "a first step" and said it is still working out how to deploy math capabilities responsibly.