Is Sam Altman Serious About a Room-Temperature Superconductor? He Said ‘Let’s Try’

Sam Altman has taken up an internet dare to hunt a room-temperature superconductor, replying to a satirical put up with “you recognize what, let’s strive.”

The comment landed days into a dispute over OpenAI’s Millennium Prize declare. The firm says its brokers solved certainly one of seven well-known math issues price $1 million every.

A Viral Dare Follows the Math Fight

A developer needled OpenAI, arguing that cracking a few extra Millennium issues would silence each skeptic. Sam Altman replied with two phrases, “okay nice.”

Hours later, one other consumer floated a satirical rumor that Anthropic had quietly discovered a room-temperature superconductor. The joke warned that a rival may throw 10,000 brokers on the downside for 88 hours to beat the press launch. The put up lifted each figures straight from OpenAI’s account of its disputed Navier-Stokes proof.

That account is already contested. Two mathematicians, Tristan Buckmaster of New York University and Anthropic’s Levent Alpoge, say the work could lean on their unpublished analysis. OpenAI denies touching it.

Altman leaned into the banter as an alternative of brushing it off. His five-word reply turned a working gag across the GPT-6 Astra launch into a public problem.

Why the Sam Altman Superconductor Dare Matters

Charge a telephone, and the again will get heat. That heat is electrical energy going to waste, misplaced as present pushes by odd wires. Superconductors waste none of it, as a result of they carry present with zero resistance.

The catch is temperature. Today’s superconductors solely work underneath excessive chilly or crushing strain. One that works at room temperature would reduce waste from energy grids, chargers, and chip design alike. Physicists have due to this fact chased that materials for many years.

No proof helps the room-temperature superconductor rumor, and Anthropic has introduced nothing. Meanwhile, certainly one of its personal researchers stop this week over superintelligence safety warnings, not superconductivity. The researcher had spent three years on pre-training work at Anthropic and OpenAI.

Altman’s reply reads as banter reasonably than a roadmap. Still, OpenAI now carries a public dare it took on itself. Whether something concrete follows the joke ought to grow to be clear quickly sufficient.

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