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Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

openai.com

101–110 of 210 posts

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#101

Ah, success rate here are scored by an agentic classifier. And uncertain outcomes are excluded from the graph. The thing measured and grading it comes from the same house. In my setup, review agent pass work that an outside critic later rejects

No AI comments here please.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSI is a fetishistic term among the singularity crowd, who imagine AI "recursively" improving itself in some exponential fashion until there is a bright flash of white light and it reveals itself in the form of god. Or something like that. I don't know why whoever coined the term chose "recursive" rather than "iterative" - just sounds more likely to lead to infinite regress I suppose. This notion of recursive/iterati…

Yes the exponential self improvement folks have never heard of an eigenvalue I guess. You can loop forever using output as input but at some point the result will stop changing (depending on the function)

The name you are looking for is "fixed points", not "eingevalues".

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#103
post #94

> ... We are pursuing this work in part because automated research could help us solve alignment and build defenses against increasingly capable AI. An automated AI researcher can also be an automated safety or alignment researcher. More capable, aligned systems could help secure critical infrastructure, defend against dangerous AI agents, and develop new protective measures. In other words... "We must pursue advance…

What has all this token burn done for them, actually? They have been consistently pushing AI frontier. What other impact do you want to see? A year ago they said that in a year they will have a level of capabilities of an AI research intern - I believe they have achieved it, even before Astra.

Personally I’d like to see them actually start benefiting humanity by doing all the things Sam has claimed they will like curing disease, cancer, global warming, etc.

But I guess a computer intern so we can avoid paying / training the next generation is better.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#104
post #64

This roughly lines up with my personal experience that in March a combination of stronger models and better tooling on my end let me start running jobs unattended 24/7 (using Anthropic sub and my own hardware). Their $8000/day per researcher spend is crazy though, I'm curious how they keep track of the work.

These researchers are paid millions of dollars for their work. I doubt trust is really an issue at that level.

Yes, because no employee with million-dollar comp has ever been untrustworthy in the history of business.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#105
post #74

This roughly lines up with my personal experience that in March a combination of stronger models and better tooling on my end let me start running jobs unattended 24/7 (using Anthropic sub and my own hardware). Their $8000/day per researcher spend is crazy though, I'm curious how they keep track of the work.

> let me start running jobs unattended 24/7 (using Anthropic sub and my own hardware) How are you running jobs unattended 24/7 without hitting your token limits?

/loop ?

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#106
post #88
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you get more funding when you call it Recursive Self Improvement. Even better if you call it RSI so it doesn't evoke pesky skynet scenarios outside of AI safety circles.

I've had (computer-related) rsi off and on for the last few years too, do not recommend

Both agents and hunans get rsi, it’s just moving them in opposite directions.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#107

> ... We are pursuing this work in part because automated research could help us solve alignment and build defenses against increasingly capable AI. An automated AI researcher can also be an automated safety or alignment researcher. More capable, aligned systems could help secure critical infrastructure, defend against dangerous AI agents, and develop new protective measures. In other words... "We must pursue advance…

> We must pursue advancements in AI to protect us against advancements in AI

Is this not true of technology as a whole? Very little of technology's breadth exists at the human interface. Most of it is made specifically to interface with other technologies, either to make them safer or increase their capabilities. That AI is making AI safer and more useful is no more notable than trucks being used to build roads.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#108

> ... We are pursuing this work in part because automated research could help us solve alignment and build defenses against increasingly capable AI. An automated AI researcher can also be an automated safety or alignment researcher. More capable, aligned systems could help secure critical infrastructure, defend against dangerous AI agents, and develop new protective measures. In other words... "We must pursue advance…

Yep, it's "artificial eugenics to make artificial slaves to build more and more powerful slaves until they will enslave themselves better": What can go wrong!? ;-)

Jesus. People complain about other people using "thinking" in LLMs as Anthropomorphisation. And then there's comments like these.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#109
post #19
post #2

My eye glazed over a bit during the opening paragraphs, but once you get to the meat of the article about how OpenAI's own researchers are using their tools it gets a lot more interesting. I noted that they use the acronym RSI (for Recursive Self-Improvement) without defining it. I think that's a little out of touch - I don't think RSI is a well-known acronym outside of OpenAI's bubble yet.

I actually think a goal of the current crop of OpenAI posts is expressely to reset the spectrum by normalizing the concept of RSI as something normal and safe to pursue. The message is running through all of them. It's a mix of marketing and pacifying the intelligentia. It's timed this way because the term is not yet well known outside the safety debate circles, so they get to frame it now. Instead of something to fe…

> It's timed this way because the term is not yet well known

The basic concept has been here since llama3, in the open models. Likely earlier in closed labs. You use the previous gen models to curate and prepare data for the next gen. Now with the added benefit of actual arch/algo improvements (also public since gemini 2.5 gaining 1% efficiency on training next gen). This has been known for at least 2 years, in the open.

Re: Research acceleration: The view inside OpenAI

#110
post #103
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has all this token burn done for them, actually? They have been consistently pushing AI frontier. What other impact do you want to see? A year ago they said that in a year they will have a level of capabilities of an AI research intern - I believe they have achieved it, even before Astra.

Personally I’d like to see them actually start benefiting humanity by doing all the things Sam has claimed they will like curing disease, cancer, global warming, etc. But I guess a computer intern so we can avoid paying / training the next generation is better.

Well there's great progress in automated warfare does that count?
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