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Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

cims.nyu.edu

71–80 of 862 posts

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#71
post #21

>I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to, our sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our drafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not look up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not get an answer. If you think these companies are not training on your prompts you are incredibly naive. These models were built by stealing and pirating literally…

Exactly, especially when the company can assign "blame" to the models themselves "ops, they just escaped our commands not to store user inputs..."

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#72
post #17

> It was also said that if OpenAI posted after us, they would say that we deserved the Clay Prize, and that we were the “closest humans to the problem”. I declined both offers. I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. T…

My best guess is that from the perspective of the OpenAI people, Buckmaster was letting his paranoia about OpenAI training tank his opportunity to receive the Clay Prize (it seems like Buckmaster and Alpoge's result isn't quite the full result required for the Clay Prize, whereas apparently OpenAI does have that full result worked out, using the same approach that Buckmaster and Alpoge had been exploring).

Whether the Codex sessions could have indeed made their way into Astra training data is something I can only speculate on though.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#73
post #62
post #57

So, leaving aside the idea that OA might've used data from the researchers Codex sessions: Do I understand correctly that the internal OpenAI work on the problems was probably started after they heard Alpoge and Buckmaster had made process by using their models? And they used the publicly available info about the researchers past work to prompt their models? If compute is cheap, and the difficult thing with scientifi…

> leaving aside the idea that OA might've used data from the researchers Codex sessions Why leave that aside? That is _the_ story. If a Chinese research lab did this we'd call it espionage.

Because they didn't do that. Tristan doesn't specifically claim that they did, and Anthropic employees don't think they did either. https://x.com/_sholtodouglas/status/2097218240397410733

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#74

I'm not one to comment often but this really pisses me off. OpenAI looked at user data, stole world class researchers' work, and then tried to threaten those researchers to do what would make their corporation profit (which they would anyways!). Imagine you have been working on a terribly difficult math problem for a decade. This is a result you have spent years on, and what you will likely be remembered for. And to…

I'm stunned that people are taking this accusation as a fact. OpenAI is no stranger to rivalry with Anthropic but 1. it's not like user data is sitting around on some kitchen table somewhere and 2. I consider OpenAI to be as economically motivated as any other actor in this space and playing around with user data like that would destroy their business. There are things that Buckmaster alleged and things that he specu…

Whenever I see comments defending AI companies, I look at the account's creation date, and interestingly almost all of them were created post 2024.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you baselessly assuming that he is lying? He explicitly reported that he was threatened and your answer here is to defend OpenAI no matter what.

You really lack reading comprehension

My reading comprehension is pretty good, I'm not the one that doesn't recognize a threat even when it's perfectly clear. Verbatim from the statement:

> The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#77
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conclusion is flawed. It's unclear at this point if OpenAI's model or employees actually looked at or stole the author's data. Having worked at large companies before, I'm leaning towards no, since very few employees have access to that data. And simply knowing a problem can be solved is half the battle.

From Buckmaster's text: The route to the Clay problem through a smooth force, options c and d in Fefferman’s statement of the problem, is the route Luis and Diego opened and the one Levent and I had quietly chosen to attack. Almost nobody else I know of was working on it. It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement. When I heard “forced,” it was a bright red flag. This…

[flagged]

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#78
post #57

So, leaving aside the idea that OA might've used data from the researchers Codex sessions: Do I understand correctly that the internal OpenAI work on the problems was probably started after they heard Alpoge and Buckmaster had made process by using their models? And they used the publicly available info about the researchers past work to prompt their models? If compute is cheap, and the difficult thing with scientifi…

This is an excellent point...

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#79
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't even make that accusation! > I asked whether the model had been trained on, or had access to, our sessions in Codex, into which we had been putting all our drafts for the whole of this project. I was told the model did not look up user data. I asked again, about training, and I did not get an answer. The shocking/interesting thing would be if it was trained on the sessions. I think it's very implausible tha…

It wouldn't be shocking at all. They stole human data to train the first models and they've been stealing it ever since to train new models. Stealing mathematicians private chats and private research and taking credit for it would absolutely be par for the course. Enterprises are well aware of it and are fully on board. You didn't think every corporation in America has an OpenAI subscription because the models were g…

They are not training a whole model in a matter of days

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would have they rushed the publication if this was not true? Are you also suggesting that he fully invented the call with Open AI?

The results being true, the 'deal' that was made being true doesn't mean some of the implied accusations here are true, for example - that Open AI used their Codex logs to drive their breakthrough.

How else would you explain OpenAI suddendly assembling a team focused on working the same problem from the same angle than the researchers that just made a breakthrough?
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