The key facts

  • OpenAI announced a $5 million donation to the Simons Foundation days after AHM's plagiarism accusations
  • In September, the company said its unreleased model had achieved a result on the Navier–Stokes equations
  • Two mathematicians question whether OpenAI's work drew on their research; OpenAI denies this

Donation after criticism

OpenAI announced on the social network X a donation of $5 million (€4.5 million) to the Simons Foundation, which supports mathematical research. The funds are earmarked for a new initiative intended to 'help mathematicians study, make sense of, and build on results produced by AI,' including recently published results from OpenAI itself. According to the company, the money will go toward 'workshops, conferences, and dedicated programs,' and researchers supported by the Simons Foundation will be given access to OpenAI's models and computing resources. The total size of the initiative, taking into account funding and resources from the Simons Foundation, Anthropic and OpenAI, is $15 million. This was reported by Euronews.

Conflict over the Navier–Stokes result

The move came days after the Association for Human Mathematics (AHM) criticized OpenAI and accused the company of plagiarism in solving a long-standing mathematical problem. In September, OpenAI announced that an as-yet unreleased AI model had achieved an important result on the Navier–Stokes equations, which describe the application of Newton's second law to the motion of fluids — a problem that has stumped mathematicians for nearly a century. On October 6, the company reported that the model had 'published' more than 700 manuscripts and produced nearly 400 other mathematical results aimed at solving the hardest problems in mathematics and computer science.

Plagiarism accusations and the parties' positions

According to TechCrunch, two mathematicians said they had themselves been close to a similar result and expressed doubts about whether OpenAI's work had drawn on their research. OpenAI denies having seen their work. One of the mathematicians, Levent Alpoge, works at Anthropic and had collaborated privately. AHM stated: 'Mathematicians did not ask for this work to be done,' adding that OpenAI showed 'a complete disregard for the norms of scientific research.' In a post on X, OpenAI noted: 'We want to support the mathematical community in turning progress in AI into deeper human understanding and new discoveries.'