Sep 17, 2026 · 18 min · 9 segments
In this episode, Katherine Forrest and Scott Caravello break down how an AI system took on one of the hardest unsolved problems in mathematics. They explain what recursive self-improvement is, how it…
Catherine ForrestHost
Scott CaravelloHost
But so this mathematical problem, the Navier-Stokes problem, it's one of seven called the Millennium Prize problems.
And so what does that mean? Because I think a lot of people probably aren't familiar with that.
But back in 2000, a mathematics institute drew up a list of seven problems that that it considered the most important open questions in all of math.
They were questions that the field had been trying to solve for decades, if not longer, and it put a $1 million bounty on each one.
And that money, which is a lot of money, is really the least interesting part of it because these problems are incredibly complex and they sit underneath entire branches of science and engineering.
And solving one does win the prize money, but the payoff, the real payoff, is that the solution and the work that is done on the way to the solution can actually unlock all kinds of answers to unsolved questions generally and allow for different kinds of devices to be created and problems to be solved that will then in turn solve other problems.
And so in the 26 years since the list of these Millennium Prizes was published, only a single one of those seven problems has actually been solved.
And so when anyone claims to have solved one of the other six, it's a really big deal.
And so here we've got a really big deal because we now have an AI model that may have solved one of those problems.
And so maybe there's still an opportunity to name it with like some sort of Goodwill hunting reference for, you know, solving this like crazy.
OK, so like all the action in Good Will Hunting kind of starts when he is a janitor at Harvard and he solves an equation on the blackboard in the hallway that no one had been able to solve.
But so this mathematical problem, the Navier-Stokes problem, it's one of seven called the Millennium Prize problems.
And so what does that mean? Because I think a lot of people probably aren't familiar with that.
But back in 2000, a mathematics institute drew up a list of seven problems that that it considered the most important open questions in all of math.
They were questions that the field had been trying to solve for decades, if not longer, and it put a $1 million bounty on each one.
And that money, which is a lot of money, is really the least interesting part of it because these problems are incredibly complex and they sit underneath entire branches of science and engineering.
And solving one does win the prize money, but the payoff, the real payoff, is that the solution and the work that is done on the way to the solution can actually unlock all kinds of answers to unsolved questions generally and allow for different kinds of devices to be created and problems to be solved that will then in turn solve other problems.
And so in the 26 years since the list of these Millennium Prizes was published, only a single one of those seven problems has actually been solved.
And so when anyone claims to have solved one of the other six, it's a really big deal.
And so here we've got a really big deal because we now have an AI model that may have solved one of those problems.
And so maybe there's still an opportunity to name it with like some sort of Goodwill hunting reference for, you know, solving this like crazy.
OK, so like all the action in Good Will Hunting kind of starts when he is a janitor at Harvard and he solves an equation on the blackboard in the hallway that no one had been able to solve.
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