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More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math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Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#751

Post by Gud »

keeda wrote: post #721
nvdc wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a developer that had a brief career in academia, i don't think your last comment is right at all. 99.9% of what i work on as a webdev, even if it's challenging and unique at the margins, is not really novel. concerns about job security aside, i don't really think of an agent as stealing my ideas because it's good at writing CRUD APIs. collaborating with ChatGPT on a novel solution to an unsolved problem, getting 9…

> concerns about job security aside But that is exactly what I'm implying is the core reason, whether people realize it or not. I totally agree that the vast majority of software dev is not novel. I have even made several comments to that effect. The same can be said for a lot of creative work as well. Yet many, many devs and creators are very unhappy with AI, and a lot of their complaints are variations on accusatio…

Not everything is about money.

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#752

Post by jrflowers »

Feeding documents into a copy machine and getting progressively angrier and more confused as it prints out copies of them. Incandescent with rage I scribble “WHY IS IT DOING THIS?” on a scrap of paper and put it in the scanning bed

Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math

#753

Post by jasonfarnon »

Agentlien wrote: post #733
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…

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 stil…

Would this be unethical if it was a human who heard rumors about a solution then attacked the problem, solved it and published first? Often knowing of the mere existence of a solution carries a lot of information--you would know the problem is accessible, you would expect clues in recent progress (the two Spanish researchers in this case), you would probably have a sense if the solution is a counterexample or positive proof, and so on. I think there are similar examples where we think of them as maybe unsporting but not quite unethical. Does it change if it's openAI and not a human?

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

#754

Post by reasonableklout »

bertonvv wrote: post #130

I've been wondering whether AI really is improving rapidly at open problems or we're being fooled. - OpenAI invites researchers to use their models, in fact giving at least 100,000 researchers free access[1], but there are also those that pay - Internal OpenAI models are reportedly solving open problems at a surprisingly fast rate[2] - But researchers will typically work on open problems. A researcher who is using Co…

Can't both be true?

1. Systems that OpenAI is able to use (either public or private) are improving rapidly at open problems, even if they are still extraordinarily expensive

2. Researchers will inadvertently speed up the rate at which the AIs improve by feeding them valuable training data

This is pretty much the definition of a data flywheel.

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

#756

Post by tedsanders »

jacobolus wrote: post #720
tedsanders wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an unfortunate misunderstanding / coincidence, as I understand it. The Sky voice actor was a real person using her own voice (not doing an impression), and she was selected via a normal process with a number of other voice actors. This happened before Sam reached out to Johansson. I totally get how Johansson would be weirded out to hear a voice similar to hers after Sam reached out and she said no, but it was…

Why would outsiders take this at face value considering Altman's reputation as a pathological liar? Cf. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... > The memos, which we reviewed, have not previously been disclosed in full. They allege that Altman misrepresented facts to executives and board members, and deceived them about internal safety protocols. One of the memos, about Altman, begins with a l…

Many people who worked on voice mode and who worked on the Frontier Math eval have since left OpenAI and now work at competitors of OpenAI (e.g., Anthropic, Meta, Thinking Machines). They'd have every incentive to whistleblow if OpenAI had lied about them. And yet... not one of them ever has.

Edit: I think I'll stop engaging here. I'm happy to share insight into OpenAI and address misperceptions if it's interesting to people, but I'm not really sure how to respond to accusations that we lie about everything. Nothing I can say can satisfy those accusations, as my posts could also be part of the conspiracies. Cheers.

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

#757

Post by timmytokyo »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #753
Agentlien wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stil…

Would this be unethical if it was a human who heard rumors about a solution then attacked the problem, solved it and published first? Often knowing of the mere existence of a solution carries a lot of information--you would know the problem is accessible, you would expect clues in recent progress (the two Spanish researchers in this case), you would probably have a sense if the solution is a counterexample or positiv…

The problem with your counter-hypothetical is that not only is it unrealistic, it's utterly impossible. No human would be able to do in such a short timeframe what the LLM did. Part of what makes the OpenAI move so egregious is how bullying it was. It was the big guy coming along with their nearly infinite resources and squashing the little guy who's devoted a good chunk of his career to the problem.

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

#758

Post by jasonfarnon »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #498
famouswaffles wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI have come out and said: >The Wednesday evening statement from OpenAI was more emphatic: “We can say categorically that it is impossible for Dr. Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the last two months to have influenced the system in any way, including training.” >The statement added, “After investigating, we can say with full confidence that no user inputs past July 3rd could have influenced this system in any way…

OK, good to know (if they can be trusted - Altman clearly is a liar), but it doesn't really change the big picture much. 1) OpenAI by their own admission, only re-tackled Navier-Stokes because they heard it had already been solved (but not yet published). This isn't advancing science or helping the mathematical community, this is just being a dick. 2) OpenAI, specifically Sebastien Brubeck, then threaten to "not be n…

"I'd say advantage humans this time." Well LLMs were instrumental in any account of what happened. It's just a question of which company's LLMs did the breakthrough, and most of us outside silicon valley don't care about that part so much. The NYU guy himself said without LLMs the solution is maybe 10 years away.

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

#759

Post by calf »

tedsanders wrote: post #756
jacobolus wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would outsiders take this at face value considering Altman's reputation as a pathological liar? Cf. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may... > The memos, which we reviewed, have not previously been disclosed in full. They allege that Altman misrepresented facts to executives and board members, and deceived them about internal safety protocols. One of the memos, about Altman, begins with a l…

Many people who worked on voice mode and who worked on the Frontier Math eval have since left OpenAI and now work at competitors of OpenAI (e.g., Anthropic, Meta, Thinking Machines). They'd have every incentive to whistleblow if OpenAI had lied about them. And yet... not one of them ever has. Edit: I think I'll stop engaging here. I'm happy to share insight into OpenAI and address misperceptions if it's interesting t…

So the credibility of your friends weighs more than the credibility of tenured professors at world-class academic institutions, got it.

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

#760

Post by keeda »

Gud wrote: post #751
keeda wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concerns about job security aside But that is exactly what I'm implying is the core reason, whether people realize it or not. I totally agree that the vast majority of software dev is not novel. I have even made several comments to that effect. The same can be said for a lot of creative work as well. Yet many, many devs and creators are very unhappy with AI, and a lot of their complaints are variations on accusatio…

Not everything is about money.

Maybe not money directly, but pretty sure it's about economic disruption. These models directly undercut the value of one's skills and labor, regardless of whether this value is measured in hard cash or abstract self-worth.
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