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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

#51

Post by jdm2212 »

DrewADesign wrote: post #30
jdm2212 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most sympathetic interpretation is just what OpenAI actually claims: they thought the other guys already got there, wanted to see if OpenAI could do it too, and were surprised to discover the other guys hadn't gotten there yet.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it sounds a bit “I was just punching the air— it’s not my fault someone was in the way.” It’s not like it’s impossible, but it doesn’t immediately pass my smell test. I’ll wait until someone close enough to be knowledgeable but has a lesser stake weighs in.

Why would it even be bad for OpenAI to try to beat Anthropic to cracking one of the 6 biggest open problems in math? Like who is getting punched?

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#52

Post by woopsn »

gorgolo wrote: post #18
johnnyApplePRNG wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

I guess by their own account they were doing competitive analysis on the product and incidentally solved NS. Probably the two companies should agree to benchmark on random diophantine systems, which are harder and more applicable anyway. It wasn't "brute force" but they did spend $10-20M over the course of a few days based on a rumor, which is ... something. The fact they're not actually taking credit, and published no insights other than "it's a vortex" shows the company really has no business in mathematics. They're not interested (the guy said as much) and it obviously won't pay the bill - rather, they were able to pre-empt an announcement they thought Anthropic may have been preparing to make.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#53

Post by ahahahahah »

esseph wrote: post #21
cwillu wrote: post #3

Who on earth reads 2 pages of an all-text article, and decides at that point “you know what, I want to watch a video; oh good, here is the article in video form, just when I needed it!”?

Me? I can read the 2 pages in ~30s or so. How long is the video? 15m? Nah. Edit: video is 37 minutes

You couldn't even read and correctly comprehend the very short comment you replied to.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#54

Post by tmsh »

dist-epoch wrote: post #19
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

They needed the general direction and idea it might work from a few folks tinkering for a year with the same models that we all have access to. The majority of credit goes to them. The idea of where to look with AI is key. Models didn't do that by themselves.

Trust: https://x.com/__alpoge__

"since on my side things were mostly me and claude having a good time yoloing random stuff in the corner rather than anything institutional"

Not: https://x.com/SebastienBubeck

"If you don't want me to be nice, then I don't have to be nice." [when clearly there's not enough deference paid to where this line of research originated]

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#55

Post by skepticATX »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #33

Setting aside the disagreement, I was very interested to see the net pricing of the discovery: > All told, the week-long effort consumed 300 billion output tokens — $22.5 million worth of compute, if charged at current Astra rates. > The Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem is one of the seven Millennium Prize problems — a set of major unsolved math problems, each carrying a $1 million bounty I know openAI…

This discounts the human breakthroughs needed to get to this point, the cost of the employees working in it, previous attempts, and more.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#56

Post by DrewADesign »

jdm2212 wrote: post #51
DrewADesign wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it sounds a bit “I was just punching the air— it’s not my fault someone was in the way.” It’s not like it’s impossible, but it doesn’t immediately pass my smell test. I’ll wait until someone close enough to be knowledgeable but has a lesser stake weighs in.

Why would it even be bad for OpenAI to try to beat Anthropic to cracking one of the 6 biggest open problems in math? Like who is getting punched?

I mean it sounds like a retroactively contrived explanation of events. If they released a statement on it, they clearly feel the need to give an explanation of their behavior. People criticize OpenAI every day and they rarely address it. They addressed this. That right there says that, at the very least, they’re concerned about the optics.

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#57

Post by jdm2212 »

DrewADesign wrote: post #56
jdm2212 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it even be bad for OpenAI to try to beat Anthropic to cracking one of the 6 biggest open problems in math? Like who is getting punched?

I mean it sounds like a retroactively contrived explanation of events. If they released a statement on it, they clearly feel the need to give an explanation of their behavior. People criticize OpenAI every day and they rarely address it. They addressed this. That right there says that, at the very least, they’re concerned about the optics.

They released a statement on how they solved one of the biggest open problems in math. That statement includes a narrative of how they decided to tackle the problem. Idk what seems retroactive and contrived about, like, "we thought our archrival had made a huge breakthrough and wanted to make sure we're not falling behind".

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#58

Post by esseph »

ahahahahah wrote: post #53
esseph wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me? I can read the 2 pages in ~30s or so. How long is the video? 15m? Nah. Edit: video is 37 minutes

You couldn't even read and correctly comprehend the very short comment you replied to.

ahahahahah

Re: OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

#60

Post by pinkmuffinere »

skepticATX wrote: post #55
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #33

Setting aside the disagreement, I was very interested to see the net pricing of the discovery: > All told, the week-long effort consumed 300 billion output tokens — $22.5 million worth of compute, if charged at current Astra rates. > The Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem is one of the seven Millennium Prize problems — a set of major unsolved math problems, each carrying a $1 million bounty I know openAI…

This discounts the human breakthroughs needed to get to this point, the cost of the employees working in it, previous attempts, and more.

I don't think I'm discounting the human breakthroughs, the cost of employees, or the previous attempts. All of that is significant work, and has lead us to a scenario where the marginal cost to solve one millenium prize problem appears to be ~$10M. I feel like you're taking a very "to bake an apple pie you must first create the universe" perspective on this; I make no claim about how much money was spent in the past, on whether it was well invested, etc. Regardless of how we feel about it, it's already been done, right?
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