What to know

• OpenAI and Anthropic each claim their AI models disproved the exponential time hypothesis, a 27-year-old pillar of theoretical computer science.
• The proofs, posted on GitHub in natural language and Lean format, have not yet been independently verified by researchers.
• Scholars whose careers were built on ETH describe large portions of their published work as suddenly obsolete, while others call the moment thrilling rather than demoralizing.
• OpenAI is organizing a verification effort with the hypothesis's original proposers and funding a conference to unpack the result.

“The last few months have been really tough. It's a lot of doom and gloom, because every week, or every second week, the results announced by AI just ann…”

Unnamed researcher, quoted in article (truncated) · Wired ↗ · Oct 28

Peter Jonsson Linköping University professorDaniel Lokshtanov UC Santa Barbara professor, original ETH co-proposerThore Husfeldt Head of algorithms research group, IT University of CopenhagenOpenAI AI lab claiming the ETH disproofAnthropic AI lab claiming the ETH disproof