Two AI labs now say one of theoretical computer science’s load-bearing assumptions is false, and the researchers who first proposed it are the ones organizing the check. OpenAI posted a paper titled “The Exponential Time Hypothesis is False” on Monday, and Anthropic followed that night with its own claimed refutation, credited to Claude. Neither paper has been peer-reviewed, and no outside group has confirmed either proof yet.

The Exponential Time Hypothesis, or ETH, says no algorithm can solve the logic problem known as 3-SAT in time that grows slower than exponentially with the number of variables, written 2 o(n) , in the worst case. It is a stronger assumption than P ≠ NP, so knocking it down would not show that P = NP.…