{"slug": "anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says", "title": "Anthropic posts its own ETH refutation hours after OpenAI, as Lance Fortnow says the approach \"looks promising\"", "summary": "Anthropic published a paper and Lean 4 formalization at 10:07 p.m. CT late Monday claiming a refutation of the Exponential Time Hypothesis, hours after OpenAI announced its system had disproved the same conjecture. Anthropic's paper, \"A 2^o(n) Time Algorithm for 3-SAT,\" is credited to Claude, with the GitHub repository stating the result \"was discovered by an internal research Claude model\" and the Lean formalization \"was written by AI models.\" Complexity theorist Lance Fortnow said the approach \"looks promising\" but that he cannot vouch for it yet and expects little effect on practical SAT solvers.", "body_md": "# Anthropic posts its own ETH refutation hours after OpenAI, as Lance Fortnow says the approach \"looks promising\"\n\n**Two AI labs now claim a faster-than-exponential algorithm for SAT. A leading complexity theorist says he can't vouch for it yet but expects little effect on practical solvers.**\n\n        By [Emerson Redding](https://runtimewire.com/author/emerson-redding)\n        · Published \n\n## Why it matters\n\nThe Exponential Time Hypothesis underpins hardness results in hundreds of papers. If two independent AI-generated proofs hold up, much of that work needs revisiting, and labs are now racing to claim research firsts, not just benchmark wins.\n\nAnthropic published its own refutation of the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) late Monday, hours after OpenAI announced that its system had disproved the same conjecture.\n\nAnthropic added a paper and a Lean 4 formalization to its formal-math repository on GitHub at 10:07 p.m. CT. The paper, \"A 2^o(n) Time Algorithm for 3-SAT,\" is credited to Claude. The repository says the result \"was discovered by an internal research Claude model\" and that the Lean formalization \"was written by AI models.\"…\n\nWhen you purchase through links in our articles, [we may earn a small commission](https://runtimewire.com/affiliate-monetization-standards). This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says", "canonical_source": "https://runtimewire.com/article/anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says-", "published_at": "2026-10-27 14:21:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-27 17:43:24.740466+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-research", "large-language-models", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Anthropic", "OpenAI", "Claude", "Lance Fortnow", "Exponential Time Hypothesis", "Lean 4", "GitHub"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-posts-its-own-eth-refutation-hours-after-openai-as-lance-fortnow-says.jsonld"}}