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How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

science.org

21–30 of 243 posts

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#21

Does it matter who gets the credit at this point? Both used AI to do 99%+ of the work. So... do machines have ego?

I guess, you don't use AI for work? Otherwise, why should you be paid for it? Should you only be paid for the code you actually wrote yourself?

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#23
I think it was a pretty questionable thing to do by trying to front-run these researchers even if they didn’t make use of their techniques. The fact that they may have inadvertently “borrowed” their work via training data makes it much worse.

OpenAI’s behavior here — even if you only consider [their] side of the story — was (at best) in bad taste.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#24
post #7

The core section: > However, communications quickly became contentious. According to Buckmaster, OpenAI offered to give him sole authorship on the Navier-Stokes solution—but only if Alpöge’s name was removed from the work and if the write-up would acknowledge the problem had been resolved by an internal OpenAI model. Buckmaster refused, in part because he was troubled by the question of what OpenAI's system had actua…

> While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from [Buckmaster and Alpöge’s] usage of our products helped improve our models.

Well yeah, if you use the free product they train on your data, ... I thought this was widely understood?

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#26

My impression: the re-aristocratization of scientific research seems inevitable.

What do you mean?

In any case mathematics is humanity's oldest open source project going on for millenia, it never belonged to a single country, institution or class.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#27

Does it matter who gets the credit at this point? Both used AI to do 99%+ of the work. So... do machines have ego?

They represent different AI usage patterns. OpenAI wants everyone to believe that it was done with a practically autonomous network of thousands of agents with little to no human intervention for 88 hours, while Buckmaster/Alpöge were using AI in a more guided way for months. If OpenAI actually used anything from Buckmaster/Alpöge work they would be misleading the public.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#28
post #24
post #7

The core section: > However, communications quickly became contentious. According to Buckmaster, OpenAI offered to give him sole authorship on the Navier-Stokes solution—but only if Alpöge’s name was removed from the work and if the write-up would acknowledge the problem had been resolved by an internal OpenAI model. Buckmaster refused, in part because he was troubled by the question of what OpenAI's system had actua…

> While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from [Buckmaster and Alpöge’s] usage of our products helped improve our models. Well yeah, if you use the free product they train on your data, ... I thought this was widely understood?

If you read Buckmasters statement, he specifically notes that they used the paid subscriptions, iirc.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#29
post #17

Moving forward, I can't imagine other mathematicians wanting to have this kind of experience. So there has to be a shift away from these services.

If you mean move to products with ZDR policies, OK, very fair and I agree. If you're talking the equivalent of carpenters should give up pneumatic air guns because hammers are more authentic, then that's silly. These are tools, and like any tool how effective they are can come down to how well you use them.

I don't think there are any pneumatic air gun "provider"s that come with an associated risk of them claiming your carpentry work.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#30

Moving forward, I can't imagine other mathematicians wanting to have this kind of experience. So there has to be a shift away from these services.

I'm a mathematician. I have a lot of trepidation about these tools and what they mean for the future of the profession.

That said... most of us are not working on problems as famous as Navier-Stokes. Even if OpenAI could scoop me based on my back-and-forth with ChatGPT, which I presume they could if they threw $15 million worth of compute at it, I highly doubt they'd bother.

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