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Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

cims.nyu.edu

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Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#81

Post by Semkas »

AJRF wrote: post #62
Semkas wrote: 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.

But there's a bunch of people already in this thread calling that stuff unfounded speculation (which I disagree with), and my point is that even if that specific thing isn't true, OA's behavior here is obviously awful.

If they're going to try to beat researchers to discoveries like this it disincentives researchers to talk about their progress publicly, and basically breaks the ecosystem of scientific cooperation / discovery. It's also immoral.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#82

Post by traes »

instagraham wrote: post #56
tristanj wrote: post #2

Full mastodon post: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tristanbuckmaster@mastodon.social/11... Mathematical explanation by Terrance Tao: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117233527638291447 It seems there is much background drama behind this, and this is what I've pieced together of what happened: Over the past year, Buckmaster and Alpöge have been using AI to work on fluid dynamics maths problems. Alpöge works at Anthropic, which wi…

> A few days later, OpenAI gets back to him, and tells him an internal model found a counterexample for Navier–Stokes Why is OpenAI chatting with him at all at this stage? Is the discussion along the lines of "hey we used the work you are famous for to do a bigger piece of work, just thought you should know" or "heyyy....so we kinda liked what you were typing in your private chat, and thought we'd develop those ideas…

Perhaps out of a sense of academic good will, knowing that he got there first?

It seems like the timeline according to OpenAI is that:

1. Buckmaster developed a counterexample to a reduced version of Navier-Stokes with Anthropic employee Levent

2. Rumors start spreading that Anthropic has solved Navier-Stokes

3. OpenAI learns this and starts throwing a ridiculous amount of compute at it, now knowing it's within reach of LLMs

4. Their LLMs (with human assistance) get FARTHER than Buckmaster, using the exact same method.

5. OpenAI reaches out to Buckmaster to negotiate a fair way to publish both results and properly assign credit

Perhaps they simply and honestly feel he is owed credit. I can't help but imagine it at least played some small part. I expect that's what Bubeck is going to claim: https://xcancel.com/SebastienBubeck/status/20972141224714323...

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#83

Post by n2d4 »

Drama/accusation summary:

- Aug 15th: Tristan Buckmaster & Levent Alpöge make progress on a few important math problems, "finite-time blowup with smooth forcing for incompressible porous media, for Boussinesq, and for 3d incompressible Euler."

- they do NOT have a proof for the $1,000,000 Millenium Prize problem. BUT, they do claim to have a proof for a similar (non-Millenium) Navier Stokes problem that could help lead the way there

- Levent works at Anthropic, but this research was independent of his work there, with a mix of GPT and Claude models. Tristan is not related to Anthropic.

- Early Sep: Rumor spreads to OpenAI that Anthropic solved a major problem. Tristan emails OpenAI to clarify, without revealing the problem they solved or how they did it.

- After hearing of the rumor, OpenAI started researching Navier Stokes with a new internal model.

- Sep 6th: OpenAI's Sebastien Bubeck tells Tristan that they solved the $1,000,000 Millenium Prize Navier Stokes problem. The approach is very similar to Tristan & Levent's approach to the non-Millenium problem.

- Tristan is suspicious of the timing, as only few others were trying this approach. OpenAI says the model didn't access his user data directly, but leaves unanswered whether Tristan's chat conversations were part of the training.

- OpenAI says they would partially credit Tristan for the $1,000,000 discovery (even though Tristan did not solve the $1,000,000 problem) — but only if they remove Levent as an author, as he works for Anthropic.

- Sep 8th: Tristan refuses to remove Levent, and rushes to publish their results independently.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#84

Post by tristanj »

dbdr wrote: post #47
tristanj wrote: post #43

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…

That's a stretch. The Luis and Diego paper was published in 2023 and is included in every frontier model's training dataset. An AI model could independently choose the same path route as Luis and Diego, without access to Buckmaster and Alpöge’s work.

And the article states "an insane amount of compute had been used," which implies OpenAI brute-forced their way to a solution. I.e. they searched for every paper published on Navier-Stokes and exhaustively attempted every approach. Such an approach would lead them to a solution.

There is not enough information at this time to reach a conclusion. The best option is to wait for statements from both sides, then reevaluate.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#85

Post by pred_ »

Keyframe wrote: post #30
qnleigh wrote: 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…

IF ANYTHING, OpenAI ought to investigate and officially react to this particular communique since this dude was communicating on their behalf. If there are supporting evidence, I would expect nothing less than a firing and an apology. The issue itself is separate from the whole thing.

Or, given how dedicated he appears to be to the company, a promotion and a raise.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#86

Post by Semkas »

modeless wrote: post #73
AJRF wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

By default OA trains their models on codex-sessions. If I understand him correctly this is something Tristan explicitly mentions in his post as a possible reason for the fast results obtained by the internal OA team. Anthropic obviously doesn't want to challenge the idea that training is transformative, even if it means agreeing with their competitor.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#87

Post by dumberquestions »

modeless wrote: post #26
dumberquestions wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...has solved a millennium problem and is sitting on the result Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the work involved here is not the actual millennium problem, but it concerns versions with an added external force that the author thinks is a path that may help toward solving the harder unforced problem.

Apparently forcing is allowed in the Millenium Prize problem statement. So OpenAI's claimed proof could win the prize. OTOH the results Tristan and Levent are publishing here do not go far enough to win the prize, though apparently they are suggestive of a general approach that could produce a solution, which seems likely to be the general approach OpenAI's proof uses. The question is whether OpenAI's pursuit of this…

Why do you find it to be extremely unlikely?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#88

Post by kzrdude »

cma wrote: post #15
akersten wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were coordinating with OpenAI regarding a publishing timeline, but could not come to an agreement, Skimming the PDFs it seems much more dramatic than that? It sounds like at least one of them is concerned OpenAI "solved" the problem by having their internal model use the chats of the independent researchers and want to claim the credit instead? I don't know. The tone is pretty accusational though: > the one Le…

Does he claim to have opted out of training too?

There are various forces at play here, academic honesty requires them to disclose any inputs regardless of license or ToS circumstances.

While common sense reminds us here that if you send your data to an external entity’s computer, you are no longer in control of said data. The lines have blurred here clearly over the last decade, but that should have made the theory yet more clear to everyone involved: your data will be vacuumed up unless you keep it sealed. Use your own computer if you want to be in control.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#89

Post by az226 »

ummonk wrote: post #72
qnleigh wrote: 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 th…

Zero data retention, wink.

No looksies, wink.

No trainsies, wink.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#90

Post by revolvingthrow »

dash2 wrote: post #46
postalcoder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 would be shocking if it wasn’t trained on sessions. Have you read the ToS parts for both openai and anthropic that talk about it? It’s so obviously a weaselly way to say "no we do not train on your exact chats but we talked with legal and we think a cleanroom reimagining of your convo is probably fine and frankly where else are we going to get such a treasure trove of training data?"

There’s potentially trillions on the line, do you seriously expect those companies to adhere to laws and regulations any more than, say, uber?

The only unlikely part is the timeline - your sessions from a week ago probably haven’t made their way into the model. It’ll just take a while longer, and will be massaged just enough so that it isn’t really your exact session word for word so you can’t sure as easily.

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