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More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math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Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#832Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but could humans cross pollinating lean x prolog x A* ( or any search algorithm) could have solved such math problems with super computer ?
I cannot say, math research isn’t my domain of expertise, I’m just trying to follow along :) But I find it interesting that Lean, a validator/compiler made by humans, is what enables those discoveries. But somehow all the praise goes to the models
Yes! Thank you, this has been irritating me from day one with agentic AI, I don't think it could be nearly as good as it is without all the well-designed tools humans have spent decades developing from PLs, to VCS, to the Unix philosophy, to CLIs / REPLs.
I think that AI is very skilled and adept at using them, but without them it would just be flailing around in its own psychosis. The tools ground the AI in reality and allow them to make progress without going in hallucinated directions. I very much doubt AI could have solved this problem without Lean, and for AI to invent something like Lean it would have to use other tools made by humans.
This is also perfect evidence of why Python isn't the end-all-be-all of programming languages just because the AI was trained on vast amounts of Python, and proof that the right language for the job is more viable than ever with the aid of LLMs.
Frankly, the forecasting that programming languages are a dead field has baffled me because it seems like with LLMs, unique programming language semantics are more important than they've ever been.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#833I 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…
Another scenario also just surfaced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49657499 – the construction used by Anthropic for the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample appears to have existed in an unpublished but publically available document. This document of course wasn't referenced in the announcement (nor did we ever get to see the prompt or reasoning traces).
Wow, this is really interesting. Thanks.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#834Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about an LLM connected to a robotic arm. What then? As for cognition - can you prove that you possess it, to an external observer? Could you, confined to a box through which you can only communicate through textual messages, prove that you are thinking, and not just responding through a mechanistic process?
Do I really need to prove that humans have cognition? Or, more to the point, do you want to challenge that assumption?
Absolutely you do. I can’t prove that I have cognition. I merely have the impression that I do, and we accept as a general axiom that others do too - but it is not provable. You are examining a system from within the confines of that system.
And you’re seriously going with “don’t ask inconvenient questions” as an argument?
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#835Earlier 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…
It’s hard to give the misunderstanding/coincidence claim credence when Altman explicitly referenced Her in relation to the feature.
Sam is not OpenAI. He's not the one who worked on voice mode, and he's not the one who worked on FrontierMath (I know both groups of people). If you believe Sam has caused OpenAI to lie about these for years, you either have to believe (a) Sam does all the work and keeps the incriminating details hidden all the employees, or (b) Sam directs everyone to lie and they all just nod along without pushing back, whistleblowing, anonymously leaking to the media, or resigning. Even if you're evil (and we are not), this is a dumb strategy, because as soon as it leaks, it will blow up in your face and kill company morale. I can't imagine a team of lawyers, comms people, and researchers who worked on these projects all sitting around nodding that we should conspire to lie to everyone, stacking lie after lie after lie. Many key people who worked on voice mode and FrontierMath have since been hired away by competitors - they'd have every incentive to expose the conspiracy if it existed, and yet none has. This is just not a realistic model of company misbehavior, imo.
To me, it's not unreasonable to believe that when launching a voice AI product, the CEO of the company mentions the most famous movie about a voice AI product, and even briefly explores whether there is a marketing opportunity its star. I don't think it's evidence of a conspiracy to copy her voice and cover it up.
If it's any evidence in the opposing direction, I promise to immediately resign from OpenAI if it ever comes out we lied about Johansson voice copying or FrontierMath eval cheating. I feel very safe making this promise.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#836Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do I really need to prove that humans have cognition? Or, more to the point, do you want to challenge that assumption?
Absolutely you do. I can’t prove that I have cognition. I merely have the impression that I do, and we accept as a general axiom that others do too - but it is not provable. You are examining a system from within the confines of that system. And you’re seriously going with “don’t ask inconvenient questions” as an argument?
>> And you’re seriously going with “don’t ask inconvenient questions” as an argument?
Where did I say that?
The conversation you seem to want to have doesn't seem to have any obvious use and you seem to want to debate a point I never made. I don't seem to be needed here so I will now bow out of the conversation.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#837Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely you do. I can’t prove that I have cognition. I merely have the impression that I do, and we accept as a general axiom that others do too - but it is not provable. You are examining a system from within the confines of that system. And you’re seriously going with “don’t ask inconvenient questions” as an argument?
>> And you’re seriously going with “don’t ask inconvenient questions” as an argument? Where did I say that? The conversation you seem to want to have doesn't seem to have any obvious use and you seem to want to debate a point I never made. I don't seem to be needed here so I will now bow out of the conversation.
That commenter was already obnoxious under this thread, and today they are relitigating Searle-Turing via Hofstadter GEB slop, so they are also an ignoramus.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#838Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do I need a source? An LLM prompt does not "move to action", because an LLM does not act. People act, animals act, software doesn't act. Acting implies volition and volition implies cognition and if you think that LLMs have those things then you're the one who should provide a source for your claim.
> Why do I need a source? Because your entire post is a personal, philosophic opinion on what words should mean, and how if someone disagrees with this personal opinion of 1/7,000,000,000 of people, then they are wrong. Every single one of these claims is unsupported and contradicted by reliable sources like a dictionary : > An LLM prompt does not "move to action" > an LLM does not act > software doesn't act > Acting…
I'm not going articulate the answer but I will say whatever beef you have with the other commenter (or me), just copy this thread into ChatGPT and it will tell you why you are more in the wrong.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#839Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Discovery" is not a goal in itself. I could launch a project to find out how many people in the United States have names such that if you assign numbers to every character and then sum the values, the sum works out to 72. It's discovery, but it's useless unless it has some higher goal. The labs are attacking these problems as a demonstration of capabilities, spending more money on the demos than any mathematician wi…
Right, mathematicians care about clout and tenure, which is a much higher purpose.
Unlike the employees at OpenAI + Anthropic that are on the verge of extracting multigenerational levels of wealth.
Re: More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
#840Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s hard to give the misunderstanding/coincidence claim credence when Altman explicitly referenced Her in relation to the feature.
Sam is not OpenAI. He's not the one who worked on voice mode, and he's not the one who worked on FrontierMath (I know both groups of people). If you believe Sam has caused OpenAI to lie about these for years, you either have to believe (a) Sam does all the work and keeps the incriminating details hidden all the employees, or (b) Sam directs everyone to lie and they all just nod along without pushing back, whistleblow…
I really think you are missing the point and the frustration of why people are so hostile to OpenAI. Your defense is kinda irrelevant and very confusing. Why are you defending OpenAI so aggressively?
Sam Altman represents OpenAI whether you want him to or not. The market and public perception hinges on his often questionable actions. The CEO’s job is in large part as a salesman. Him posting “her” on Twitter to try and promote GPT-4o’s voice features is hard to believe that he didn’t know what he was doing and the market and Scarlett Johansson reacted accordingly. A competent person would not have made such an inflammatory statement after she had explicitly declined to permit OpenAI the use of her voice.
Your CEO is going on podcasts and going around saying that AGI is here and also AGI is not important. What blithering marketing is going on here?