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Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

cims.nyu.edu

91–100 of 872 posts

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#91

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…

I don’t think you understand how brazen big tech companies are in practice.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#92
post #36

"I was shown a prompt and told the internal research model had simply been given the problem statement. Levent had been told by Sebastien “very little human input” had been used. This turned out not to be true." The money in nerdy frontier math is very little. The money in Big AI is very very much. So the deal is this: We will pay an army of you guys very well and you will get to work on your favorite problems. The o…

That's the reputation NSA has (had?), too.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#94
post #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 th…

"using the same approach that Buckmaster and Alpoge had been exploring" is imo mealy wording: it seems fairly likely that OA heard Buckmaster and Alpoge were close to a breakthrough, and decided to use their unlimited compute to quickly prompt based on their assumptions about B&As work.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#95
post #36

"I was shown a prompt and told the internal research model had simply been given the problem statement. Levent had been told by Sebastien “very little human input” had been used. This turned out not to be true." The money in nerdy frontier math is very little. The money in Big AI is very very much. So the deal is this: We will pay an army of you guys very well and you will get to work on your favorite problems. The o…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49132249

I said something similar a month ago.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#97
Hard mathematics problems used to take years if not decades to tackle manually. But now with enough compute and a hint that a certain approach might work, it just takes a few days. This could be the last year that humans could still make more substantial contribution to major match problems than machines.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#98
post #59

The accused Sebastian Bubeck has denied the allegations on Twitter[0], and various other OpenAI employees[1,2] seem to be mocking another Anthropic employee voicing support for Levent[3]? Things are getting messy. [0] https://xcancel.com/SebastienBubeck/status/20972141224714323... [1] https://xcancel.com/polynoamial/status/2097215233119211902 [2] https://xcancel.com/danintheory/status/2097214838003138603 [3] https://…

i already have an extremely low view of openai and their staff, but this is lower than i thought they'd go

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#99
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

Well, of course Anthropic employees would say that, since they likely do the same. Claiming that your primary competitor doesn't engage in a certain malicious practice is supposed to make it look as if there's no way you would too. If somebody even says that about their competitor, then surely there must be truth to that, otherwise you would never give credit to someone you're opposed to.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because very few people actually have access to these logs, all access is monitored and recorded, and improper access will get you fired. It's not worth risking your job over something like this.
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