OpenAI Claims ETH Refutation, Anthropic Releases Its Own Hours Later
Summary
OpenAI released solutions to three long-standing math problems, including a claimed refutation of the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a core assumption about computational difficulty. Anthropic released its own ETH refutation hours later, after its mathematician Levent Alpöge said OpenAI's work built on existing research. MIT's Ryan Williams is organizing a community response and an open letter.
Key Points
- Ryan Williams tells TechCrunch the proof has "two or three alien-looking parts" that the whole community needs to work on together.
- OpenAI asks Williams, Russell Impagliazzo and Ramamohan Paturi, who published ETH in 1999, to help interpret the solution.
- OpenAI science lead Dan Roberts tells Williams the lab checked and is reasonably confident the result breaks no crypto systems.