OpenAI may have claimed to have a million-dollar math problem that’s fundamental to lots of modern technology—but don’t expect anything to change. At least, not immediately.
Earlier this month, OpenAI claimed one of its internal models had proved that the Navier-Stokes equations, which are used to model the motions of fluids, break down and yield nonsensical answers in certain scenarios. The equations can be thought of as “essentially Newton’s second law, applied to a little fluid parcel,” says Justin Beroz, CEO of ReynKo, an engineering company that specializes in turbulence.
Regardless of whether OpenAI can actually take the credit for solving the problem, the notion that an AI has apparently succeeded where humans have for so long failed is earth-shattering for mathematicians. That isn’t the case for engineers, however, say several experts working in fluid dynamics.
The Navier-Stokes equations are used to great success in a wide array of applications, such as calculating airflow over a jet’s wings, forecasting weather patterns and determining how blood flows through biomedical devices. Even so, mathematicians have spent nearly 200 years struggling to prove that the models fully correspond with reality. At very small scales, they suspected, the equations might predict something physically impossible: fluids that accelerate to infinite speeds.
Still, as to how this affects engineering, Beroz says is, in short, “not much.”
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