AI Writes for 88 Hours, Humans Read for 7 Weeks! Mathematicians Begin to Understand OpenAI's Millennium Prize Problem Proof

On September 8, OpenAI published a proof claiming to resolve the Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, written by about 10,000 agents in 88 hours, totaling 166 pages; GPT-6 Astra then spent 17 hours translating the proof into Lean for line-by-line machine checking. Mathematician Scott Armstrong relayed on X on October 26 that several groups of partial differential equation experts had largely understood the proof approach; in his view, the AI's proof most resembles convex integration, but it makes the fluid flow spontaneously generate oscillating external forces by designing fluid instabilities, a way of generating force with no prior precedent. Lei Zhen of Fudan University and collaborator Xiao Ren released a preprint in late September that rewrote the part of the original manuscript constructing the flow profile. A preprint by three researchers including Bastounis on October 6 pointed out differences in some statements and derivations between the original manuscript and the Lean version, while stating that they did not judge whether the textual proof is correct. The Clay Institute still lists the problem as in progress, and OpenAI said it does not intend to claim the $1 million prize.