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OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

techcrunch.com

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Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#11

Post by 9864325789976 »

EA-3167 wrote: post #8

Shocking, I really expected more from the "totally legitimate startup" planning a $2 trillion IPO with their bottomless money pit. I genuinely assumed that the company credibly accused of stealing from Apple in the most ham-fised way possible would have some kind of guiding ethical principles. At the very least the paragon of decency that is Sam Altman would have stopped this. Get ready, bag-holders on index-tracking…

What index tracking funds will cause investors to lose their shirts?

I can't wait to see your short position that will make you rich enough to retire.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#12

Post by tmsh »

Even through the lack of ethics here and there and mistakes - I think the major headline is that talented people are collaborating with AI to achieve impressive results. It’s shrouded in competitive mistakes of judgment. But it’s an existence proof for collaborating with AI and achieving incredible things.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#15

Post by [deleted] »

jdm2212 wrote: post #9
cmiles8 wrote: post #4

OpenAI has a lot of explaining to do here. The “least worst” representation of the course of events is that their researchers are just jerks, and not behaving in a manner that’s considered acceptable in the research community. Other alleged scenarios just go downhill from there.

It is worth actually reading OpenAI's response, which is basically that they were trying to see if their models could do what Anthropic had already done, and were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all, and (b) in fact no one else had done it yet. And then they didn't want to give an Anthropic employee coauthor credit for work that OpenAI had done, which idk seems pretty fair?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#16

Post by biophysboy »

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117237320796901560

Terrence Tao recently published an interesting take that zooms out from the details of the Navier Stokes drama.

Its an interesting observation he makes, because it is not dissimilar from the relatively common phenomenon of one academic lab getting scooped by another lab (usually by coincidence).

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#17

Post by johnnyApplePRNG »

jdm2212 wrote: post #9
cmiles8 wrote: post #4

OpenAI has a lot of explaining to do here. The “least worst” representation of the course of events is that their researchers are just jerks, and not behaving in a manner that’s considered acceptable in the research community. Other alleged scenarios just go downhill from there.

It is worth actually reading OpenAI's response, which is basically that they were trying to see if their models could do what Anthropic had already done, and were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all, and (b) in fact no one else had done it yet. And then they didn't want to give an Anthropic employee coauthor credit for work that OpenAI had done, which idk seems pretty fair?

>were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all

They were surprised another competitor had not wastefully thrown $20 million+ worth of compute at a problem they had no business solving in the first place?

That's reaching, imho.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#18

Post by gorgolo »

johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #17
jdm2212 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth actually reading OpenAI's response, which is basically that they were trying to see if their models could do what Anthropic had already done, and were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all, and (b) in fact no one else had done it yet. And then they didn't want to give an Anthropic employee coauthor credit for work that OpenAI had done, which idk seems pretty fair?

>were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all They were surprised another competitor had not wastefully thrown $20 million+ worth of compute at a problem they had no business solving in the first place? That's reaching, imho.

Why is it wasteful to solve one of the most famous problems in modern mathematics? And why would one particular company have no business solving it in the first place?

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#19

Post by dist-epoch »

tmsh wrote: post #12

Even through the lack of ethics here and there and mistakes - I think the major headline is that talented people are collaborating with AI to achieve impressive results. It’s shrouded in competitive mistakes of judgment. But it’s an existence proof for collaborating with AI and achieving incredible things.

OpenAI says they just pointed the AI at the problem:

> Regarding the level of human involvement on our end: although a group of people was involved in our efforts, we collectively had no research-level expertise in fluid dynamics and the Navier-Stokes problem, and therefore were unable to meaningfully contribute to the mathematical content.

https://x.com/SebastienBubeck/status/2097379415747342689

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#20

Post by hatthew »

I feel like this whole thing hinges on one point. OAI says[0]:

> However, our proofs differ significantly and even the precise results proved are different in the Euler case (forced vs unforced).

How true is this?

If the implied statement is true (i.e. OAI couldn't have stolen results because the results were so different anyways), then I feel like it's pretty clear that OAI solved the problem on their own, and offering some amount of credit to Tristan and Levent is generous. Though on the other hand it's dirty to have even attempted a scoop in the first place.

If the implied statement is false, and Tristan/Levent's results are a substantial portion of the solution to the millennium problem, then it's probably unintentional but clear plagiarism. I think it's plausible to assume that OAI has trained their models on Tristan's codex conversations, and so regardless of legal ownership, the academic ownership definitely includes Tristan and Levent.

The rest of the drama (individual statements and wordings, e.g. by Sebastien) seems like a bit of a red herring. Worth noting, but not worth basing conclusive judgements on regarding academic misconduct. Regardless, OAI does not seem like the good guys.

[0]: https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/

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