Chris Budd: Did AI prove the Navier-Stokes Millennium Problem?

Recently, Open AI announced that one of their systems had proved one of the hardest maths problems in the world – the Navier-Stokes Millennium Problem, which comes with a million dollar reward. Naturally it has shaken the maths world, but there’s still a lot of confusion about what has actually been proved and how. To get to the bottom of it, we knew exactly who to ask: Chris Budd OBE, a Professor at the University of Bath and long-time Plus collaborator. Chris has worked on the Navier-Stokes equations and currently co-leads the Maths for Deep Learning research project and he tells us what it has been like on the mathematical/AI frontline.

This is a rapidly developing area – since recording this podcast it has been established that the Open AI result does not apply to the Navier-Stokes equations in full generality (i.e. without forcing). We are continuing to follow developments and will be sharing updates as more information is released. In fact, we will have a number of other episodes in this podcast series about AI and maths, so make sure you are following for more!

Maths on the Move, is the podcast from plus.maths.org. We speak to researchers from the frontiers of mathematical science so you can connect with the maths that shapes and explains our world. Hosted by Plus editors Rachel Thomas and Marianne Freiberger.

This content is part of our collaboration with the Mathematics for Deep Learning (Maths4DL) research programme, which brings together researchers from the universities of Bath and Cambridge, and University College London. Maths4DL aims to combine theory, modelling, data and computation to unlock the next generation of deep learning. You can see more content produced with Maths4DL here.