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Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

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251–260 of 862 posts

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#251
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Buckmaster says both his and Alpöge's use of Codex was non-institutional, and OpenAI claims the right to train their models on inputs and outputs of non-enterprise users in their service policies [0]. So I'm not sure they were even promised that. [0] https://openai.com/policies/how-your-data-is-used-to-improve...

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…

OpenAI is willing to credit so plagiarism is not the right framing here.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#252
post #83

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 le…

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

I don't think this part is accurate. OpenAI was researching Navier Stokes before. It's possible that they started on a new approach after hearing of Tristan's success, however that is not proven and I expect we will hear OpenAI's side of the story today.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#253
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…

For context and balance, Bubeck has tweeted a curiously non-specific denial: > A series of false and inflammatory allegations against me are currently circulating on social channels. To clarify, I came into the discussion following academic norms, and I'm disappointed that it has come to this. Anyone who knows me knows that academic standards are of the highest importance to me. Will have more to say tomorrow.

This is an insane thing to read. Bubeck had a reputation even before he started with OpenAI. Of course it was him that was involved in this drama.

This is such a sad mess, and it really didn't have to be this way.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#254
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://…

Dan and Noam both posted exactly the same line "Seb is a really sweet guy with great intentions..."

From which I assume OpenAI PR wrote it for them. Which isn't surprising, but means it isn't worth taking seriously as them saying anything. It's official OpenAI PR.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They don't need to train a whole model. They can feed it new information and fine tune it.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#257

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…

This Godfather-like threat in particular pissed me off as well:

> 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. 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]

#258

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…

OpenAI is willing to credit so plagiarism is not the right framing here.

It's not clear to me that they would have credited the authors if they had not got in touch with OpenAI first.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#259
post #46

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…

Why would this be implausible?

ChatGPT user sessions were found publicly exposed to the internet not too long ago. Moreover, OpenAI has continued to play a hype-marketing game by revealing how their models keep breaking out of the sandbox.

Conspiracy minded thinking is not helpful, but why should OpenAI be granted the benefit of the doubt here after being caught doing underhanded/negligent shit on several previous occasion?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#260

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…

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.

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