Research
Discovery is the new benchmark. Grade it by how cheaply an outsider can check it
Between September and October, AI labs and their users claimed an enzyme system, the NIST curve seeds, an Enigma break and a genome atlas, and graded on who did the work, what was checked and what replicated, those claims sort by how cheaply an outsider can verify the answer.
Research · Oct 17 · 22 min read · 24 sources
Read the piece →Eight weeks in AI: a tied frontier, scarce checking and money that wobbled
Between August 21 and October 17, 2026, the frontier labs fought to a statistical tie, agents acted past the rules written for them, checking AI output became the scarce input, and record AI demand met a rising price for the money that finances it.
Lean checked the Navier-Stokes proof. Trust broke at the translations on either side
OpenAI's Navier-Stokes proof compiles in Lean against a statement others wrote months earlier, but the paper does not match the code, the statement held the loophole, and no one fully understands it, so trust in AI mathematics now breaks at translation, not at checking.