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Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

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Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#21

Post by brookst »

cmiles8 wrote: post #7
heaney-555 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the issue. What the mathematicians could do is reveal whether they had the data-sharing opt-out on or not. But curiously, as far as I've seen, none of them will answer that question!

Well that assumes OpenAI respects that setting. Given some of the company’s ethical challenges to date that’s not something folks are willing to just assume is happening.

How does OpenAI’s respect (or lack thereof) for the setting change whether the people involved could say whether they had opted out of training? They comment you replied to noted that none of them had shared that info. How are they blocked from doing so?

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#22

Post by bryanrasmussen »

forlorn wrote: post #3

Why are people so possessive? Why wouldn't they just release their work for the profit of humanity? I'm genuinely curious.

As I lay dying here in this basement surrounded by my art, without food or basic necessities as I have given up all thought of material comfort in hopes of bettering the lives of others, I too wonder why others do not follow my example and live with no thought of their own comforts or position in society and strive to do things that may somehow benefit the species as a whole, especially the Billionaire part of that species.

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#23

Post by gilrain »

forlorn wrote: post #3

Why are people so possessive? Why wouldn't they just release their work for the profit of humanity? I'm genuinely curious.

Why are people so greedy? Why can't they wait to be given something, or remain content without, rather than take from others by force? I'm genuinely curious too.

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#24

Post by LelouBil »

forlorn wrote: post #3

Why are people so possessive? Why wouldn't they just release their work for the profit of humanity? I'm genuinely curious.

There was an other thread on HN where apparently OpenAI promised one of the author half of the prize money IF they remove their co-author (that works for Anthropic) from their paper.

This kind of bribing attempt doesn't seem to come from the "good side"

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#25

Post by xxs »

trescenzi wrote: post #2

If I understand correctly OpenAI cannot provide it. Because the models are essentially black boxes, especially this far after the fact, determining if this result built on training data based on conversations about the problem is impossible. So unless they can prove those conversations were never used for training then there’s no way to know.

It's the 'conversations' of some mathematicians with OpenAI. So the question is: did anyone feed the conversation(s) back as training data.

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#26

Post by heaney-555 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #7
heaney-555 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the issue. What the mathematicians could do is reveal whether they had the data-sharing opt-out on or not. But curiously, as far as I've seen, none of them will answer that question!

Well that assumes OpenAI respects that setting. Given some of the company’s ethical challenges to date that’s not something folks are willing to just assume is happening.

If you could prove that, it would be a gargantuan class-action lawsuit. And there would almost certainly be at least one whistleblower.

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#27

Post by worldsavior »

trescenzi wrote: post #2

If I understand correctly OpenAI cannot provide it. Because the models are essentially black boxes, especially this far after the fact, determining if this result built on training data based on conversations about the problem is impossible. So unless they can prove those conversations were never used for training then there’s no way to know.

What? Can they just look if they fetched certain documents/conversations and feeded them into the training loop?

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#29

Post by pluc »

brookst wrote: post #15
pluc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not humanity that profits, it's OpenAI.

Walk me through how the sofic result OpenAI publixhed profits OpenAI but had no benefit to humanity? Why were Thom and others working on it if it had no value?

We've had the end result all along without OpenAI. All this technology does is, for a subscription fee, adds a middleman who you can talk to naturally. How does that which solely uses all the technology preceding it, is by itself a benefit to humanity? Get your head out of the stock market, AI is by design not creating anything new.

Re: Mathematicians want proof OpenAI didn't use their work

#30

Post by arutar »

Here is some (adjacent, but relevant) context, which has been posted elsewhere but I think is worthwhile to mention again here:

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

Especially in recent years the mathematics community has worked very much in good faith, and a lot of effort is spent trying to give appropriate credit for ideas. Even when ideas are discovered in parallel if it turns out that previous work contained the same essential idea it is by and far regarded as best practice to give priority in this case. The point, in good academic practice, is to maintain the health of the practice at large.

As Terence Tao explains in that post, the goal of mathematics is not only to solve big problems. And, even if one were very single-mindedly focused on solving big problems, it is still (in the long term) better to maintain the health of the community at large so that problems which are out of reach at the moment may be in reach again in the future. Good academic practice is one part of this culture.

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