Does it matter who gets the credit at this point? Both used AI to do 99%+ of the work. So... do machines have ego?

They represent different AI usage patterns. OpenAI wants everyone to believe that it was done with a practically autonomous network of thousands of agents with little to no human intervention for 88 hours, while Buckmaster/Alpöge were using AI in a more guided way for months. If OpenAI actually used anything from Buckmaster/Alpöge work they would be misleading the public.

Asking the question in the right way may be 99% of the work. And the fact that openAI is effectively snooping on users and then outspending them to announce a break through is just gross.

I guess, you don't use AI for work? Otherwise, why should you be paid for it? Should you only be paid for the code you actually wrote yourself?

Machine owners have stocks which valuation must increase to satisfy their debts.

If you take OpenAI at face value, they claim they threw a relatively simple prompt at the problem on a whim and boom presto, a swarm of "agents", 15 million dollars and 90 hours later they disproved the hypothesis. Wow, look at how powerful our AI is, you don't even need to be a world-class mathematician, you just tell it to solve a problem and it does!

By contrast, what the world-class 2 mathematicians did was sat down and started working on their proof for over a year, using AI along the way to help with their research. A much more grounded and realistic use of these tools, but one that doesn't generate nearly as much hype as the alternative.

The cracks in OAI's story has been immediately disproven, and they seemingly plagiarized the work of the 2 and then threw the team of researchers and the 15 million dollars at the problem after the fact. It doesn't exactly bode well for their hype machine when you consider the chain of events here, which is why people care about this, as OAI's constant and incessant lies they spew every minute of every day is finally hopefully catching up to them, and right before their big IPO too.

Editing to add: And I think it's all such a shame. We live in a time with genuinely insanely cool technology that is doing some truly incredible, ground-breaking stuff, but it's all tainted by a gaggle of greedy sociopaths and reprobates whose only goal in life is to have the largest number in their bank accounts. LLMs could've been such an amazingly neutral and cool and useful tool had more level-headed people been at the wheel, but instead we're stuck with this childish bullshit and giving the likes of Sam Altman real power to enact societal collapse.