Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

cims.nyu.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 867 posts

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#391

Post by epistasis »

n2d4 wrote: 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…

> OpenAI says the model didn't access his user data directly, but leaves unanswered whether Tristan's chat conversations were part of the training.

This sort of cagey half-answer is highly suspicious and indicates that yes OpenAI did actually "access user data directly" because they are only willing to say that the "model did not access user data." That has a very specific meaning, the model looking up user chats, that they can defend.

So, everything we submit to OpenAI can be considered to be part of future models, right?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#393

Post by iaw »

postalcoder wrote: post #40
mayakacz wrote: post #12

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…

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. With the behaviors we know OpenAI engages in the accusations are wholly believable.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#394

Post by cindyllm »

augment_me wrote: post #369
mti wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a serious discipline like mathematics, this isn't just an asshole move, but a career-ending level of academic misconduct.

*In the old discipline of mathematics. We are in new times, where capital and compute decides mathematics, so we don't give a shit anymore

[dead]

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#396

Post by brcmthrowaway »

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://…

I hope they mock Sholto. Dude is an absolute podcast grifter/booster.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#397

Post by nezi »

derangedHorse wrote: post #385
hkmaxpro wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Sam Altman and Sebastien Bubeck admitted they only want Buckmaster to be the lead author on a rewrite of the OpenAI proof. https://x.com/sama/status/2097385167002415140 https://x.com/SebastienBubeck/status/2097379411691516310 A wake up call for using OpenAI models. If you discover something with their model and you work for a competitor, they “felt it would be inappropriate” for you “to author OpenAI’s work”.

It sounds like OpenAI is trying to appease the author when they don’t have to by allowing him to rewrite their proof. They probably don’t believe he deserves to, so him asking for a coauthor from Anthropic might overextend their grace in their eyes.

Given that Tristan has said that the proofs that LLMs come up with are mostly "slop" and not up to the standard that human written papers achieve, maybe OpenAI needs an expert like him more than you think to get the result published?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#398

Post by semi-extrinsic »

qlte wrote: post #350
Drblessing wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math is all that matters.

A hundred pages of impenetrable brute forced Lean would advance the field much less than something elegant and human understandable, perhaps relying on some new clever spark of innovation that might inspire new areas of research. Particularly if the first proof being "solved" thanks to piles of money and compute for self-serving marketing discourages the mathematician who might have otherwise devoted years of focus t…

Obtaining a finite-time blow-up for Navier-Stokes does not necessarily advance the field of mathematics by any significant measure, whether the proof is very long or very short.

As a concrete example, such a proof could be less than a page with very specific initial and boundary conditions and inserting them into the equations to get something that goes to infinity when time goes to some finite value.

This would resolve the Millenium problem but not make humanity any smarter.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#400

Post by dekhn »

Semkas wrote: post #94
ummonk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that necessarily wrong, so long as the original innovators get a citation credit?
Post reply on HN