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More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math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Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#731
This might be a hot-take, but unfortunately here using AI for your paper was already a bad decision at first.

It doesn't take OpenAI's responsibilities away but I guess the right way is to never feed of use any AI around unpublished content, at the known cost to see it spread around.

As one said, OpenAO is like this untrustworthy colleague that knows everything about everyone at work: the less you tell him the better.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#732

But who are you going to believe? Multiple independent academic researchers or the CEO who was fired two years ago for gross dishonesty?

More like, "Who are you going to believe: a multi billionaire, or people competing for a million dollar math prize?"

If you think mathematicians do this kind of research just for the chance to win a million dollar prize, please gtfo

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#733
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…

I think this move by OpenAI is crazy. At best, if all unconfirmed accusations are unfounded, they still heard a rumour that someone had solved a huge million dollar problem and was about to make a name for themselves. Then, they decided this was a good opportunity to pour millions of dollars into trying to snag the glory while the researchers were busy cleaning up their notes and polishing the announcement.

That still sounds highly unethical.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#734

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…

The idea that mathematicians were not involved in actively directing the and structuring the search for solutions is absurd to any professional mathematician who has tried to prove things using these models.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#735

[dead]

The corporate espionage ring targeting Apple also isn't a good look. A company that does that is a company that will lie to you about harvesting internal materials from your company.

So no worse than hiring the big 4?

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

#737
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, blame them for seeking out an upper middle class lifestyle with a relatively standard home in commuting distance of their place of work and dedicating the rest of their life to teaching mathematics to new generations of people. How vain a pursuit. After all, the ascetics at openAI are having to make do with half a million total comp.

Built a top a pyramid of failed math undergrads, grad students, and mediocre post docs. That half a million total comp is the consolation prize for the disillusioned.

>Built a top a pyramid of failed math undergrads, grad students, and mediocre post docs.

Like much of things in this world, when you take a step back and realize that it was another human being who made that lunch time slop bowl for you, for the lowest wage the law allows for.

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

#738
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 problem here is that OAI (and others) pretend or claim that this is uncharted legal territory, where in fact it is very simple. We have a machine that is fed data, and produces new data as a result. If that new data depends (in any way) on the fed data, then from a legal viewpoint it is derived from that data. Whether they anthropomorphize the operation performed by the machine does not matter. They can anthropom…

> If that new data depends (in any way) on the fed data, then from a legal viewpoint it is derived from that data.

The "in any way" part is either so broad it makes everything derivative, or not, in which case things are no longer simple.

If everything is derivative then it seizes to be meaningful. The words I write are derivative, I literally copied them from someone else, yet my sentences as a whole can be fully novel.

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

#739
post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I suspect the main reason the community is not receiving it well is largely the same reason many developers are not receiving coding agents well. Because the training data is millions of hours human efforts being distilled into a cascading hierarchy of enrichment by interested parties without providing attribution or compensation?

> without providing attribution or compensation?

many teachers also taught many students over the course of history, and very few would eventually pay any compensation or even attribute their financial (or career) outcomes to the teachers.

What made model training different?

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

#740
post #632

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…

That's just damage control lol. That's the equivalent of a NDA. Get your name as lead author, get paid, and stay silent forever.
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