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More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

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Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#681

Post by shye »

guelo wrote: post #566
nezi wrote: post #412

I think it's a useful analogy to compare OpenAI to a human collaborator. These researchers willingly collaborated with an OpenAI model, giving it ideas, and OpenAI provided useful replies. Then, OpenAI goes ahead and publishes work along the lines of this collaboration, without attributing the researchers. If OpenAI was in fact a human researcher, this would be highly unethical. Now, OpenAI is claiming that the model…

Bad analogy. OpenAI spent millions on compute to get their result. This is more like if a billionaire heard of your promising mathematical lead and then gathered hundreds of top mathematicians to work on it.

In the current telling of this story, the billionaire is also giving his hired army copies of your notes he copied without permission.

But the worst part in your analogy ain’t omitting the suspected spying and the intimidation that followed, but that your hypothetical mathematical philanthropist won’t be able to hire his army: unlike some OAI employees, no self-respecting mathematician would agree to such unethical task.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#682

Post by what »

keeda wrote: post #632
magicalist wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not obvious to me that's an unethical thing to do In terms of work in mathematics, something I personally would not do based on ethical grounds would be to hear a rumor that some researchers are taking a certain approach and may be nearing a solution, use a model that was possibly contaminated with intimate knowledge about that approach (though later they investigated and think it wasn't), and then commit mill…

But by OpenAI's telling they heard a rumor that the problem had already been solved. So they reached out to the other researchers as an attempt to share the credit, and in fact have at least one of them be the lead author (which is when they found out the AI had solved a broader problem than the researchers.) Seems pretty ethically palatable. I suspect the main reason the community is not receiving it well is largely…

> So they reached out to the other researchers as an attempt to share the credit

This isn’t at all what happened? What are you talking about?

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#684

Post by what »

tedsanders wrote: post #487
jjwiseman wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, OpenAI is not claiming that the model wasn't trained on those sessions. What they've said is “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.” and “We did not use their prompts or proofs to prompt our models or direct our agents.” and “While unlikely, we cannot…

We were also curious and we looked further into this. We've determined it was impossible for Dr. Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the last two months to have influenced the system in any way, including training. This goes beyond what we said earlier, when we were less sure. If prompts were submitted earlier than that and training was not opted out, there may be a chance they made their way into our training pipeline i…

Have you been authorized to speak on OpenAI’s behalf? I assume not because your source is an NYT article.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#685

Post by afzalive »

wrvn wrote: post #322
afzalive wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't stop them from training on your data apparently. I have that disabled but still has to disable "Don't train on my data" in the privacy center too. https://privacy.openai.com/policies?modal=take-control

Is this claim based on anything besides there being an alternative way to disable it? The privacy center mirrors multiple other functions as well, like account deletion and downloading personal data, but the corresponding buttons in ChatGPT are still doing what they are supposed to.

It's based on the fact that I had the switch in the setting disabled but this was still something available for me to request.

After the request, this was no longer accessible.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#686

Post by jamienk »

I think OpenAI and Anthropic are slowly feeling the pressure to GET SOME $$ or a plan for some $$ — they need to somehow generate some NETWORK EFFECTS and LOCK-IN. Without that there's no stability: selling ad hoc one-offs is much much too quaint! This is dawning on them like it dawned on Google when they stopped not being evil. Need... to... "MONETIZE"...!

Model: FB. FB scraped other websites on a massive scale, then spent big on legal lobbying to block others from scraping. FB slurped our address books and spied on our friends. FB bought other companies and mixed the databases. FB made an art & science out of generating "sticky engagement" (they literally acted like trying to addict kids was a worthy "academic" goal, suitable for "serious" investigation thet they consider legitimate "science"). They mastered the cookie and have researched web fingerprinting techniques running 24/7/365.25. Recall that FB recently backdoor-installed a webserver onto every iPhone they could in order to circumvent tracker-blocking.

We aren't just disclosing by chatting. The AI companies now run binaries on all of our computers. They are 1000% non-transparent about everything. They make up new econ-jargon (like "run-rate") to make it seem like they are disclosing. They are constantly doing complex international lobbying and mucking in international relations. They have powerful propaganda/spin centers generating stories, ,manipulative warnings, and misleading info.

This is NOT a comment on AI tech. I like AI, and I support the right of people (programmers) to scrape the open web.

But in short: these are good, old-fashioned tech companies that we have seen over and over ... and over. They are positioned to be the next M$, the next FB (IBM, AOL, lol). Did you follow the latest Steve Balmer news? Do you read Pro Publica?

I get on my knees and PRAY...

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#687

Post by lmeyerov »

nezi wrote: post #412

I think it's a useful analogy to compare OpenAI to a human collaborator. These researchers willingly collaborated with an OpenAI model, giving it ideas, and OpenAI provided useful replies. Then, OpenAI goes ahead and publishes work along the lines of this collaboration, without attributing the researchers. If OpenAI was in fact a human researcher, this would be highly unethical. Now, OpenAI is claiming that the model…

OpenAI says deidentified data from the private sessions go into training. (Well, explicitly said they will not rule that out.) That changes a lot of the conversation.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#688

Post by BobbyTables2 »

nezi wrote: post #412

I think it's a useful analogy to compare OpenAI to a human collaborator. These researchers willingly collaborated with an OpenAI model, giving it ideas, and OpenAI provided useful replies. Then, OpenAI goes ahead and publishes work along the lines of this collaboration, without attributing the researchers. If OpenAI was in fact a human researcher, this would be highly unethical. Now, OpenAI is claiming that the model…

The AI not being human doesn’t escape ethical consideration - OpenAI employees are culpable for what they build.

This was academic research. Could just have easily been trade secrets and proprietary data.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#690

Post by jamienk »

jamienk wrote: post #686

I think OpenAI and Anthropic are slowly feeling the pressure to GET SOME $$ or a plan for some $$ — they need to somehow generate some NETWORK EFFECTS and LOCK-IN. Without that there's no stability: selling ad hoc one-offs is much much too quaint! This is dawning on them like it dawned on Google when they stopped not being evil. Need... to... "MONETIZE"...! Model: FB. FB scraped other websites on a massive scale, the…

ChatGPT accesses my IP address and geo-locates me. Claude code now asks if it can have my browser cookies. Next they will take my address book. They might scan my whole computer. Etc etc. These are pretty low-tech, normal techniques.

We can't trust any of their denials. FB denied everything year after year.

AI regulation needs to start here. Forced interop, forced source code licensing, harsh penalties for privacy violations or conspiracy to access private data. Block lobbying. Etc. These are the kinds of old-fashioned solutions we need for this kind of old-fashioned evil!

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