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On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

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Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#761

Post by joshka »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #699
tedsanders wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that was the allegation last night. I work at OpenAI, though not on the team that did this, and my understanding is: - we decided to ask our model for Millenium problem solutions because of two reasons: (a) our new model was looking incredibly good and (b) we heard rumors that some Millenium problems had been solved and were curious if our models could solve them (the goal here was not to scoop any particular in…

If the goal was not to scoop them, why did openai put a massive team on this, working weekends, only after they heard rumors of the solution?

I worked at OpenAI previously, but don't know any of the people involved in this.

My guess was it was probably this was more a nerd snipe than any action from OpenAI that was a "massive team" being put on it. Literally someone looking at this and asking "I wonder if our models are good enough yet".

It's easy to assume that having access to massive compute amounts means significant coordination, but this assumes that you're looking at the costs of this sort of thing from an external lens. Internally, tokens are often treated as free and infinite.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#762

Post by derangedHorse »

pred_ wrote: post #151
tedsanders wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that was the allegation last night. I work at OpenAI, though not on the team that did this, and my understanding is: - we decided to ask our model for Millenium problem solutions because of two reasons: (a) our new model was looking incredibly good and (b) we heard rumors that some Millenium problems had been solved and were curious if our models could solve them (the goal here was not to scoop any particular in…

> we did not read any private chats Your post says “While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models .” We can discuss what it means to “read” things but obviously the issue here isn't whether you did it manually or automatically. But more importantly, what on earth are you doing threatening real scientists to remove their coauthors, then ma…

Except that’s not what happened. OpenAI offered to collaborate and put conditions on their offer. They aren’t threatening the removal of a coauthor for an independent work.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#763

Post by The_Blade »

qlte wrote: post #566
Eridrus wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing mathematicians such as Terry Tao being unhappy with open problems being solved makes me sort of question the usefulness of any of this pure mathematics. If we're not happy that the problems are being solved, why care about this field at all?

Pure mathematics, almost by definition, doesn't typically argue the field is always or even often "useful" (for some other purpose or application). But, as mathematicians learn and push forward, occasionally something like elliptic curves will emerge as having useful applications, making all that previously "pointless" specialized knowledge newly valuable. Or advances in physics, that suddenly have a need for a speci…

[dead]

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#764

Post by tristanj »

biophysboy wrote: post #109
floatrock wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI's position: > 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 improve our models . However, our proofs differ significantly and even the precise results p…

Why is it unlikely?

Because the models are trained on hundreds of billions of user conversations, across more than a billion different humans. The conversations are anonymized and not easily traceable back to a specific user.

It's unknowable and not possible to prove if any one specific conversation contained the insights for solving Navier–Stokes.

We also don't know if the authors unintentionally provided data to OpenAI through alternate means, such as via alternate accounts or model feedback queries.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#765

Post by nozzlegear »

jdm2212 wrote: post #726
nozzlegear wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you need privacy, then you are going to have to pay full price for those tokens (API). At this point, how can we even trust that they aren't accidentally training on those tokens too?

It'd be corporate suicide for them to be caught violating zero-data-retention commitments. But also if you're really paranoid you can just use ChatGPT on Azure or AWS, where nothing is flowing back to OpenAI at all.

> It'd be corporate suicide for them to be caught violating zero-data-retention commitments.

One would think getting caught asleep at the wheel while their bots are escaping containment and hacking third parties would be corporate suicide. One would think that potentially stealing their competitors' work on the Navier-Stokes problem would be corporate suicide.

Alas we live in bizarro world where there are zero consequences (maybe the opposite, in fact) for the first, and their employees meme about the second on social media.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#766

Post by logicallee »

tedsanders wrote: post #41
pavel_lishin wrote: post #8

Is this the one that was allegedly based on someone else's actual work & prompts? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915 https://bsky.app/profile/quantian.bsky.social/post/3muyhwbcd... https://cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/statement.pdf

Yes, that was the allegation last night. I work at OpenAI, though not on the team that did this, and my understanding is: - we decided to ask our model for Millenium problem solutions because of two reasons: (a) our new model was looking incredibly good and (b) we heard rumors that some Millenium problems had been solved and were curious if our models could solve them (the goal here was not to scoop any particular in…

My OpenAI account was deactivated on Sunday due to a claimed infraction of production of child materials, maybe based on a few words in a technical chat that clearly isn't about that. Can you take a look? rviragh@gmail.com - I was doing a lot of important work and projects and sharing much of my work with OpenAI. I also am a big proponent of funding Social Security Trust Funds (OASI & DI Solvency) so reactivating my account would let me do that as well. Thank you for taking a look.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#767

Post by derangedHorse »

Imnimo wrote: post #738
tedsanders wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they opted out of training, then we definitely did not train on them. If they did not opt out, then I don't personally know if training signals came from their chats, and I don't think we'd be able to tell without their cooperation in identifying them. And even if signals were trained on in some manner, I highly doubt it made a difference to a problem as challenging as the NS proof. Reasons for my doubt: - I know…

I don't think you'd lie about it, I don't think you'd train on them if they opted out, and it seems very plausible that this wouldn't have been decisive in whether the model could solve the problem. That said, it also seems at least possible that a key idea or a particular step found its way into training data. It wouldn't mean OpenAI stole their proof - clearly the model developed its own approach. Either way, it se…

> It seems like people who might want to use OpenAI's models as part of their research would want to be very clear about whether doing so can make them, even in principle, more likely to fall victim to this.

Fall “victim” to what? Having their responses in the training data if they fail to opt out? That is what will happen.

If you’re referring to falling “victim” to OpenAI scooping a problem discussed in training, this also wasn’t the case. They chose the problem based off human-spread rumors.

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#768

Post by bibimsz »

qlte wrote: post #733
bibimsz wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

feels like moving the goalpost. is the achievement impressive or isn't it?

The question being posed isn't whether AI is impressive but whether we're at the "dawn of the singularity"

i'm observing that rapidly moving goalposts is a feature of the singularity

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#769

Post by xdavidliu »

dgellow wrote: post #302
apical_dendrite wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their own tweets are also pretty eyebrow-raising: > One option we discussed was that Tristan could be the lead author on a rewrite of OpenAI’s Navier-Stokes proof. It is in that context that I said “it would be simpler if Levent was not an Anthropic employee” because I felt it would be inappropriate for an Anthropic employee to author OpenAI’s work. Why would you offer another researcher the lead authorship on your g…

And why cannot they have someone associated with Anthropic as co-author? That’s not obvious at all. For sure they would prefer to be the only ones, but it’s pretty standard to have co-authors from different companies, even if they are technically competitors. What is inappropriate about it?

would edit my comment but it's been a few hours

> but it’s pretty standard to have co-authors from different companies

that's only true for papers that are not millenium problem solutions

Re: On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

#770

Post by derangedHorse »

lossolo wrote: post #680
tedsanders wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they opted out of training, then we definitely did not train on them. If they did not opt out, then I don't personally know if training signals came from their chats, and I don't think we'd be able to tell without their cooperation in identifying them. And even if signals were trained on in some manner, I highly doubt it made a difference to a problem as challenging as the NS proof. Reasons for my doubt: - I know…

> If they opted out of training, then we definitely did not train on them. Can't you guys just check their account settings so the public knows what was set? EDIT: Why was this downvoted? I'm genuinely asking because I have no idea. Opting out is just a normal setting in the profile, It's not like I'm asking for their private conversations or PII. If I were the person claiming that they trained on my conversations, I…

I don’t think your question is unfair*. They can check and so can Buckmaster. If he didn’t opt out, there’s a good chance his data was used for training. I believe this to be the case myself. What I’m more skeptical about is the purported impact of this data on the model’s behavior.
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