Sam Altman Says ‘Let’s Try’ on Superconductor Dare

Sam Altman has responded to an online provocation by agreeing to hunt for a room-temperature superconductor, telling a satirical post "you know what, let's try."

Days after a controversy erupted about OpenAI's claim to a Millennium Prize, Altman made that comment. The company asserts that its artificial intelligence solved one of the seven well-known math problems, each carrying a $1 million reward.

A Viral Dare Follows the Math Fight

A developer taunted OpenAI, suggesting that solving additional Millennium problems would quiet all doubters. Sam Altman answered with a two-word response: "ok fine."

ok fine

— Sam Altman (@sama) September 8, 2026

A few hours later, a different user posted a satirical claim that Anthropic had secretly discovered a room-temperature superconductor. The jest cautioned that a competitor could deploy 10,000 agents on the problem for 88 hours to outpace a news announcement. Those numbers were taken directly from OpenAI's description of its contested Navier-Stokes proof.

you know what

let's try

— Sam Altman (@sama) September 8, 2026

That narrative is already being challenged. Two mathematicians—Tristan Buckmaster from New York University and Anthropic's Levent Alpoge—claim the work might rely on their unpublished studies. OpenAI says it did not access that research.

Rather than dismissing it, Altman embraced the banter. His five-word answer transformed a joke circulating around the GPT-6 Astra launch into an open challenge.

Why the Sam Altman Superconductor Dare Matters

When you charge a smartphone, its back becomes warm. That heat represents wasted electricity, lost as current travels through standard wires. Superconductors lose none, as they transmit current with no resistance.

Temperature is the challenge. Existing superconductors function only in intense cold or under enormous pressure. A material that operates at room temperature would eliminate waste from power grids, charging devices, and chip design. For decades, physicists have been pursuing such a substance.

No evidence backs the rumor of a room-temperature superconductor, and Anthropic has released no announcements. Separately, one of its researchers resigned this week due to concerns about superintelligence safety, not superconductivity. That researcher had worked on pre-training at both Anthropic and OpenAI for three years.

Altman's response seems more like joking than a plan. Nonetheless, OpenAI now bears a public challenge that it accepted. Whether any real action results from the joke should be revealed in time.