OpenAI claims a cryptography breakthrough. Does that threaten Bitcoin?

OpenAI says its AI system has refuted the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a longstanding assumption about how difficult certain logic problems are to solve. The Oct. 26 announcement has researchers organizing an independent examination. The disclosed result does not establish a practical attack on Bitcoin. ETH here means Exponential Time Hypothesis, rather than Ether. The subject is 3-SAT, a puzzle in which a computer must find true-or-false settings that satisfy a collection of logical rules. The hypothesis says solving these problems requires exponential time in the number of variables in the worst case. OpenAI says the result was verified in Lean, a proof assistant, although its scope note describes a weaker time bound than the manuscript's sharpest claim. The researchers organizing the community's examination have expressly declined to certify it.

First reported by CryptoSlate. This page is a short excerpt; the full text is theirs.