OPENAI'S AI CRACKED THREE IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEMS — MATH, CODE, PHYSICS

OpenAI announced on October 26 that its internal models produced three results it calls landmarks: a proof of the local smoothing conjecture in every dimension, which would also resolve the Kakeya and Stein restriction conjectures; a proof that the Exponential Time Hypothesis is false; and a mathematically rigorous existence proof for quantum chromodynamics and a unified completion of the Standard Model, including pure Yang-Mills theory.

The math and computer-science results were formalized in Lean — the ETH disproof on October 17, the local smoothing proof on October 19 — and both the AI-written papers and the Lean proofs are public on OpenAI's GitHub. The physics materials are being held back by the expert group shepherding them, led by Nobel laureate David Gross, which will write the result up itself.

OpenAI is not presenting the work as settled science: it calls the manuscripts "raw research data" and handed each result to outside experts — including the ETH's own proposers, Russell Impagliazzo and Ramamohan Paturi — to verify, explain, and build on, with no NDAs and no academic credit sought for the lab.