OpenAI 声称推翻指数时间假设 ETH

OpenAI just claimed to disprove one of computer science's most fundamental assumptions. But why is this such a big deal? Here's our quick breakdown.

Imagine you have a bunch of switches, each either ON or OFF, and rules like:

Switch A must be ON, OR switch B must be OFF
Switch B must be ON, OR switch C must be ON
At least one of switches A, D, or F must be OFF

With 6 switches, there are only 64 possible combinations.

But with 100 switches, there are approximately 1.27 trillion trillion trillion combinations (2¹⁰⁰), and the rules can connect switches in complicated ways, making it extremely difficult verify which combinations work.

So the mathematical challenge is finding even ONE combination that satisfies every rule, or proving that none exists.

The assumption right now is that even with clever algorithms that eliminate huge numbers of possible combinations, solving the hardest 3-SAT problems still requires exponentially growing computation as you add more switches.

This type of problem is called 3-SAT, where each rule involves at most three variables.

And 3-SAT is NP-complete, meaning that if someone discovers a polynomial-time algorithm that solves every 3-SAT problem, they could theoretically solve every problem in NP efficiently.

So the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) makes a stronger claim: even in the worst case, solving 3-SAT cannot be done in subexponential time.

But OpenAI claims to have found an algorithm that does exactly that, meaning the time required still grows extremely quickly, just fundamentally slower than ETH says is possible.

If the proof holds, it would overturn one of the foundational assumptions in theoretical computer science.

Read more about it:
https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2610.exponential-time-hypothesis-refutation