Look, we’re all pretty sure 3-SAT can’t be solved in polynomial time. So when this comes up—as happens multiple times a day—we all know where to turn. Say it with me: the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH). I mean, sure, that’s unproven too, but it gives us all a good idea of how much non-polynomial time something is going to take.

Or does it??? Because OpenAI claims to have just disproved the entire ETH. Back to the drawing board everyone!

I’m actually just paraphrasing a YouTube video about the ETH (probably badly) and have zero idea what I’m talking about. But if you’re a theoretical computer scientist working with optimization and algorithms, this matters. And OpenAI is claiming this and two other breakthroughs in its latest science dump.

In addition to believing its AI models have disproved the ETH, OpenAI claims to have resolved something from the study of waves and harmonics called “the Kakeya conjecture” by finding a novel proof for all dimensions in something called “the local smoothing conjecture.”

But don’t get too relaxed thinking about all those smooth waves, because over in physics, OpenAI also thinks it has a proof of “certain interacting quantum field theories containing gauge fields and fermions in four dimensions, including Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and a unified completion of the Standard Model of particle physics.” Yep, you read that right: gauge fields and fermions!

“ An advisory group it had worked with had already spoken out against a private company using unreleased internal AI models to achieve breakthrough results, and OpenAI had apparently done that.

Source link