AI solved one of math's hardest problems. Humanity learned nothing (so far)

Tristan Buckmaster is a mathematician at New York University. He poses for a portrait in his office in Manhattan on September 11, 2026. Buckmaster and his collaborator Levent Alpöge have been working on the Navier-Stokes equations. They are clashing with OpenAI, which claims to have cracked the equations.

OpenAI beat humans to solving the Navier-Stokes problem, but mathematicians say the AI's solution isn't telling them much.

(Image credit: Karsten Moran/for The Washington Post)