From Decrypt · By Jose Antonio Lanz
In brief
OpenAI says its AI has proven that ETH is false—but it’s not the “ETH” crypto traders are thinking about.
The company says its AI models have found a way to disprove the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a computer-science conjecture from 1999.
Here’s what all that means, and what mathematicians are doing about it.
OpenAI says ETH is false, and Crypto Twitter reacted exactly the way you would expect. “Damn algo traders just slaughtered $ETH,” a user called Takumi posted on X, while Andrew Jiang quipped: “Vitalik has been real quiet since this came out.”
But chill out, degens, the ETH in question is the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a computer-science conjecture from 1999 that has nothing to do with Ethereum, its price, or co-founder Vitalik Buterin. So, crypto bros, you can breathe.
OpenAI published a 67-page paper claiming its AI found a way around the hypothesis, and the people who proposed it are now checking the work.
Computer scientists Russell Impagliazzo and Ramamohan Paturi proposed ETH with Francis Zane, and it says a classic logic puzzle called 3-SAT (finding true-or-false settings that satisfy a pile of rules, three options at a time) cannot be solved much faster than by trying every combination. Hundreds of papers assume it to show that problems in graph theory, computational biology, databases and geometry cannot be solved quickly, per OpenAI.
Myriad: Where does ETH go next? Click to make your prediction.
In other words, ETH is a map of what computers will probably never do fast, and OpenAI says its model just redrew it. “The refutation of the ETH reopens questions about how much faster these tasks could become,” the company wrote on its blog, “and may help guide the search for better algorithms.”
The paper, dated October 17 and revised October 25, describes a deterministic algorithm (one with no randomness) that counts every satisfying assignment of such puzzles in subexponential time, meaning the work grows more slowly than any exponential in the number of variables. Counting solutions is harder than deciding if one exists, so the harder job brings the easier one along for free.
OpenAI says its AI found the disproof on October 16 and that it was formalized in Lean, software that verifies every logical step mechanically, on October 17. Both sit on GitHub, the same route as its 722 math manuscripts earlier this month, of which only 162 came with a computer-checked main result.
Impagliazzo, Paturi, and MIT’s Ryan Williams lead the independent examination, and they are careful about their role. “Our involvement should not be taken as certification of the claim,” the three wrote in an open letter, adding that “a result of this significance requires careful, independent scrutiny and an understanding that others can reconstruct, question, and build upon.”