OpenAI Claims ETH Is False, Anthropic Counters, Academics Debate Proof Process

OpenAI released AI-generated proofs claiming to refute the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH), a foundational assumption in computational complexity, alongside results in mathematics and physics. Anthropic challenged the originality and within hours released its own ETH refutation, while academic reviewers raised concerns about both the claims and OpenAI's release methodology. The episode marks an escalation in competitive proof generation between frontier AI labs and a shift toward structured academic oversight before public dissemination.

• Anthropic mathematician Levent Alpöge suggested OpenAI's solutions were based on pre-existing work; Anthropic released its own ETH refutation hours later.
• MIT professor Ryan Williams, organizing the computer science field's response, previously called an earlier OpenAI proof release a 'DDOS attack on mathematicians' but agreed to collaborate on shepherding the new findings.
• OpenAI appointed expert 'shepherds' including a Nobel laureate to verify proofs, with different release processes per discipline: GitHub for mathematics, a working group for computer science requesting public proofs and a funded conference, and a working group for physics.
• One claimed result addresses part of a Millennium Prize Problem, which carries a $1 million prize; if the computer science proof holds, hundreds of research papers could lose their foundation.

Bottom line Caveat: The ETH refutation and other proofs remain under expert review and are not yet validated; if you work in computational complexity or algorithm design, monitor the working group's findings before drawing conclusions.