'You know what, let's try': Altman leans into the joke that OpenAI chases rumors with 10,000 agents

Two viral dares, two two-word replies. On September 8 — the day OpenAI announced its Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize claim — Sam Altman leaned into the week's meme that his company chases rumors with thousands of agents. To a satirical post about Anthropic quietly finding a room-temperature superconductor, he replied "you know what, let's try," a five-word X post that has since drawn more than 13,700 likes.

Two dares, same day

The first jab came at 19:32 UTC from kache, posting as yacineMTB: OpenAI should solve "a few more millennium problems" to prove it really cracked Navier-Stokes itself — "how hard could it possibly be, anyways." Ten minutes later, Altman replied "ok fine," and that two-word answer alone has picked up over 9,500 likes.

The second dare was anabology's parody of the week's rumor dynamics: "I heard a rumor that Anthropic discovered a room temperature superconductor... Hopefully no Anthropic competitors throw 88 hours of 10,000 post-Astra agents at this to pre-empt the press release." Both figures come straight from OpenAI's own account of its disputed Navier-Stokes run. At 22:22 UTC, Altman played along: "you know what / let's try."

Why the joke spread

Top comments turned the reply into a superconductivity meme review. "LK-99 PART 2!! LETS GOOOOO!!!" called back to the 2023 room-temperature superconductor that collapsed under replication failure; "Sic Itur Ad Astra" stretched the Latin motto over OpenAI's Astra model; "Please do the peptide that gives you cat ears next" kept the satire running. A screenshot of the exchange became the anchor r/singularity thread, sitting near 700 points with 130-plus comments.

None of that energy is about physics, yet the subject earns the jokes. A true room-temperature superconductor would transform power grids, chips, and energy storage, so the field is already full of false alarms — and the joke is that OpenAI would brute-force any rumored result rather than wait for a paper.

What the reply actually commits to

Nothing, yet. No funding, no lab, no timeline were attached — and the rumor being answered was itself a joke: there is no evidence Anthropic found anything, and the company has announced nothing, as outlets like BeInCrypto noted. Separately that day, Altman defended his team's Navier-Stokes conduct, saying they "acted with integrity and generosity throughout."

Two-word replies are not research programs. The exchange is a CEO leaning into the accusation that his company acts on rumors at compute scale — self-aware, but still a bit. What would settle it: an actual research commitment from OpenAI, or the joke staying a joke.