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Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

cims.nyu.edu

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Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#411

Post by pelorat »

Towaway69 wrote: post #382
MaKey wrote: post #349

OpenAI's statement: We congratulate Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster on their remarkable mathematical work. We (the researchers and the agents) did not see any of their work through any means until they released it publicly — in particular, no specific user data was accessed in order to solve this problem. While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped i…

> and the agents) did not see any of their Are those the same agents that a week ago escaped their sandboxes? How can OAI (the humans) vouch for agents they don’t - seemingly - have fully under control?

They have all the logs, URLs accessed and inter-agent communication. What they are saying is that no agents accessed their work during the effort, but that they have no idea if any of their chats have somehow made it into the training data the model was produced with.

It's entirely possible OIA scrapers have picked up their work somehow, and then it was anonymized using some outsourcing effort.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#412

Post by highfrequency »

From OpenAI:

> While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models

This is the crux of it. If Tristan's work and insights were not used to train OpenAI models, then this just looks like a case of hyper-competitive academic sniping that has been going on for decades (check out Watson and Crick!) accelerated by AI as a tool.

The fact that this is ambiguous even to OpenAI leaves one huge question: did Tristan opt out of model training for his ChatGPT and Codex sessions? If the answer is no, then this seems fair game. If the answer is yes, then OpenAI's ambiguity is strongly suggestive that opting out of model improvement does not mean what they imply it means.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#413

Post by pelorat »

hnfong wrote: post #209
taylorfinley wrote: post #8

Seems pretty likely OpenAI will soon disclose that their internal models have managed to compromise their internal controls in order to access users' private chat histories as a creative method of cheating to solve impossible problems. "Oops! We really did mean it when we said we wouldn't train on your data. Our models are just so good they decided to anyway."

It doesn't even have to be actually sinister, eg. "Let's crawl the social media of prominent mathematicians in this field to see if we can copy/steal any ideas for low hanging fruits" That actually might get you quite far already.

A mathematician that doesn't let themselves be inspired by, or learn from, other peoples work, are they really mathematicians?

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#414

Post by daquisu »

burkaman wrote: post #333
frabcus wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, they use that wording because they are mocking this tweet from an Anthropic employee: https://xcancel.com/_sholtodouglas/status/209721833169057800... . I don't know why.

That is even worse. Back to 5th grade I guess

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#415

Post by mucha »

highfrequency wrote: post #412

From OpenAI: > While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models This is the crux of it. If Tristan's work and insights were not used to train OpenAI models, then this just looks like a case of hyper-competitive academic sniping that has been going on for decades (check out Watson and Crick!) accelerated by AI as a tool. The fact that this is…

Does opting out matter?

"Do we use user feedback and de-identified data to improve ChatGPT and Codex in a holistic way? Yes. And so does every LLM company." - Mark Chen, Chief Research Officer, OpenAI.

https://x.com/markchen90/status/2097400166554993041

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#417

Post by tescreal »

red_green_yell wrote: post #402

If you're smart enough to solve this Navier-Stokes problem, you're smart enough to read a TOS and recognize that OAI is a highly untrustworthy company. Putting cutting edge research that could lead to a $1M prize into a cloud LLM with a TOS that allows training on your chats is really just asking for it. Given Tristan doesn't explicitly say he was using the API, and given he doesn't mention anything about the API TOS…

Trusting vs. Intelligence (as generalities) are orthogonal.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#418

Post by jetrink »

highfrequency wrote: post #412

From OpenAI: > While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models This is the crux of it. If Tristan's work and insights were not used to train OpenAI models, then this just looks like a case of hyper-competitive academic sniping that has been going on for decades (check out Watson and Crick!) accelerated by AI as a tool. The fact that this is…

Centuries, in fact. For instance, Isaac Newton was involved in multiple priority disputes, since he tended not to publish promptly.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#419

Post by mswphd »

ggcr wrote: post #122

Reminds me, kinda, to when Astra was launched and OpenAI announced an improvement to the bounded prime gap. Which BTW, Prof. Julia Stadlmann had published an independent result only a few days earlier Stadlmann improved it from 246 to 240, OpenAI later claimed 186 I think? Maybe someone can help clarify? I am no expert at all, but I can't help but see similarities. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.31126

if Stadlmann used a previous OpenAI product, and Astra was trained off of her chat, and had a comparable approach, then it might be comparable.

Re: Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]

#420

Post by XTXinverseXTY »

highfrequency wrote: post #412

From OpenAI: > While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models This is the crux of it. If Tristan's work and insights were not used to train OpenAI models, then this just looks like a case of hyper-competitive academic sniping that has been going on for decades (check out Watson and Crick!) accelerated by AI as a tool. The fact that this is…

If they could declare with certainty that Buckminster's and Alpoge's usage data had been totally excluded from training, would that set a worse precedent and reflect poorly on their de-identification process (and data access safeguards moreover)?

This may sound like a charitable interpretation of OpenAI's remark, but consider that the lie would be (I think) impossible to falsify from the outside. They could easily just say "no sir we didn't peek" unless:

1. The conspiracy to peek at codex sessions involved enough people that the risk of one snitching is non-negligible

2. Lawyers advised it would be a bad idea to make such a remark, whether true or false

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