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Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

cims.nyu.edu

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Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#171

Post by mishellaneous »

shrx wrote: post #158
mishellaneous wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An AI model could independently choose the same path route as Luis and Diego, without access to Buckmaster and Alpöge’s work. the post you were replying to quotes Buckmaster specifically denying this: "It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement." > And the article states "an insane amount of compute had been used," which implies OpenAI brute-forced their way to a so…

> "It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement." Can they back up this statement somehow?

yes, this is ultimately nothing but a claim.

Buckmaster did also mention, for example, that a team of people was employed to solve the problem, which supports this claim. but that is another claim whose veracity could also be questioned. but at some point we must trust other people, unless we can be satisfied with only believing what we personally see.

(also, IMO, the coincidence of both discoveries in time is pretty suspicious. this one doesn't need you to trust many people i guess)

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#172

Post by Davidzheng »

tristanj wrote: post #160
macleginn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this should be in the title of the post. 'OpenAI allegedly threatening to ruin a prominent researcher's career', or smth like that.

There's some glaring mistakes in your framing. First, this is an unnamed OpenAI employee speaking, not OpenAI the organization. Second, you miscomprehended the article. The employee did not "threaten to ruin a prominent researcher's career". The actual quote is "Why would you ruin your career?", which implies the researcher would damage their own career, i.e. via self-sabotage. Then the actual "threat" is "If you don…

I don't even understand the conflict tbh. Probably I'm just dense. Tristan is not claiming NS, just a huge advance which may solve NS soon. OAI is claiming NS and willing to credit Tristan for the ideas and publish after.

Oai offers two options, the second Tristan views as dishonest. But Tristan rejects the first, why? Because he thinks it's theft? But then why would OAI threaten him?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#173

Post by paxys »

andrewchambers wrote: post #166
traes wrote: 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://…

if I look at the timestamps, it appears Sholto is the one mocking Noams tweet... Noam posted first.

Doesn’t matter. People’s minds are already made up, and facts aren’t getting in the way.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#174

Post by paxys »

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.

Why is that the story? Is there anything to back it up beyond a single accusation?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#175

Post by pred_ »

andrewchambers wrote: post #166
traes wrote: 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://…

if I look at the timestamps, it appears Sholto is the one mocking Noams tweet... Noam posted first.

Douglas' 6:59 AM UTC post is edited. He has a 6:22 AM UTC post that predates Brown's 6:47 AM UTC post: https://xcancel.com/_sholtodouglas/status/209720900556759874...

Also note the lower post ID in the URL.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#176

Post by tristanj »

Davidzheng wrote: post #172
tristanj wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some glaring mistakes in your framing. First, this is an unnamed OpenAI employee speaking, not OpenAI the organization. Second, you miscomprehended the article. The employee did not "threaten to ruin a prominent researcher's career". The actual quote is "Why would you ruin your career?", which implies the researcher would damage their own career, i.e. via self-sabotage. Then the actual "threat" is "If you don…

I don't even understand the conflict tbh. Probably I'm just dense. Tristan is not claiming NS, just a huge advance which may solve NS soon. OAI is claiming NS and willing to credit Tristan for the ideas and publish after. Oai offers two options, the second Tristan views as dishonest. But Tristan rejects the first, why? Because he thinks it's theft? But then why would OAI threaten him?

He claims to have found a counterexample for NS (see the second paragraph of the article), but the paper is not ready yet.

OpenAI claims to already have a full proof (which they produced in the past 5 days after the rumors leaked). Hence the dispute.

What I find interesting is the timeline of when he found counterexample for NS is very unclear. Did Tristan find a counterexample weeks ago or was it very recently? Was it after OpenAI solved it? The wording is intentionally vague.

Either way, there was a massive rush to publish these results.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#177

Post by pred_ »

paxys wrote: post #173
andrewchambers wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if I look at the timestamps, it appears Sholto is the one mocking Noams tweet... Noam posted first.

Doesn’t matter. People’s minds are already made up, and facts aren’t getting in the way.

Assuming that your mind is not already made up, and that facts aren't getting in the way, do see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608972

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#178

Post by tempfile »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #143
tempfile wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't relevant whether they were promised that. Indeed I think the assumption must be that they were not promised that, since otherwise the author asking if they were would not make much sense. If OpenAI did use the conversations from Buckmaster and Alpoge, then not disclosing it, explicitly, is plagiarism. If they planned to use that plagiarism to pressure the authors to publish, that is even more unethical. What…

That's absolutely right. Why the downvotes? If OpenAI are using but not acknowledging the work of others that's plagiarism. If they don't know for sure, but aren't performing due dilligence to make sure they aren't, that's also plagiarism.

I can imagine excuses for unknowing plagiarism in this case. What is described in the article seems much more serious: a research program that was only initiated following reports of the author's similar program. In this case no excuses of "I didn't know" can apply, it is not like this revealed some obscure work from the 1980s nobody could reasonably have foreseen. And as far as I can tell this program was only really initiated to apply pressure to the researchers, without their knowledge/consent. It looks very weird.

> Why the downvotes?

I think there was only ever one. Not sure why.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#179

Post by tecleandor »

Davidzheng wrote: post #170
paxys wrote: post #167

The accusation brings up an interesting point. If I publish something, and disclose that I used AI for assistance, do I have to credit everyone who previously used the same AI to try the same problem? Because their prompts inevitably made it to the training data for my prompts?

I hope credit assignment just dies--it's too much drama.

Credit assignment is how researchers keep their job.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#180

Post by garyfirestorm »

tristanj wrote: post #160
macleginn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this should be in the title of the post. 'OpenAI allegedly threatening to ruin a prominent researcher's career', or smth like that.

There's some glaring mistakes in your framing. First, this is an unnamed OpenAI employee speaking, not OpenAI the organization. Second, you miscomprehended the article. The employee did not "threaten to ruin a prominent researcher's career". The actual quote is "Why would you ruin your career?", which implies the researcher would damage their own career, i.e. via self-sabotage. Then the actual "threat" is "If you don…

> Second, you miscomprehended the article. The employee did not "threaten to ruin a prominent researcher's career"…

Proceeds to ask removal of another coauthor or else we totally discredit you - phrased as why would you do this to yourself.

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