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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

#51

Post by jaccola »

eggy wrote: post #43

If you run a model locally to work on your area of expertise in mathematics, and you make a discovery, haven't you stood on the shoulders of others that created that model you are using? Playing devil's advocate here, are we only in for human collaboration, but not machine contributions in this case? Scholars get cited, but do they normally get paid for others citing them and using their work to advance their own? I…

There’s always been a distinction between published work and unpublished.

If my friend showed me some unpublished work (Say 90% of the hardest work toward a significant proof) if I then go finish the remaining 10% and publish the whole thing as mine it isn’t ‘building on the shoulders of giants’ it’s plagiarism/theft.

If he’d published that work first and I took it and found another proof and credited him for his work via citation then that would be fine.

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

#52

Post by sobiolite »

We shouldn't forget that the only way this unpublished research is supposedly getting into the training data in the first place is because the researchers making the accusations were conversing with ChatGPT in the process of doing their own research on these problems.

But if they are saying this contaminated the model's training data with knowledge of their ideas, who's to say the model they were developing their research ideas with wasn't already contaminated through prior discussions with other researchers about the same topics?

So if contamination is proved, or cannot be disproved, and if these researchers want OpenAI to relinquish its claim to have solved these problems independently, then it would seem they also have to give up their claim to have solved them independently?

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

#54

Post by asimpletune »

It's a little like we've gone back to the problem of the customer becoming the product.

If I were a mathematician I would not my unpublished work to go into the hands of a competitor.

If I were a lawyer I wouldn't want private details of my defense to be made available to the prosecution. Anonymous or otherwise.

I wouldn't want the plot to an unreleased book to be suggested to another author.

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

#55

Post by monster_truck »

throwaway713 wrote: post #19

Am I missing something obvious? Isn’t this just a simple DB query to see the state history of the “Data Controls” → “Improve model for everyone” toggle in the settings? Just report whether that was ever on and over what time period.

Yes you're missing several obvious things. Even saving the last changed date (nevermind every change date or what the change was) for every setting for every user would be earth crushingly wasteful. The value by itself isn't even worth including in backups.

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

#56

Post by api »

sobiolite wrote: post #52

We shouldn't forget that the only way this unpublished research is supposedly getting into the training data in the first place is because the researchers making the accusations were conversing with ChatGPT in the process of doing their own research on these problems. But if they are saying this contaminated the model's training data with knowledge of their ideas, who's to say the model they were developing their res…

So it’s Napster for ideas?

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

#57

Post by krater23 »

When you want your unpublished work unpublished, don't store them on other peoples computers. Especially not on people their job it is to use data to create money.

Would this data moved through a hack to ChatGPT, this would be another thing, but like this. No pity at all.

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

#58

Post by loose-cannon »

sobiolite wrote: post #52

We shouldn't forget that the only way this unpublished research is supposedly getting into the training data in the first place is because the researchers making the accusations were conversing with ChatGPT in the process of doing their own research on these problems. But if they are saying this contaminated the model's training data with knowledge of their ideas, who's to say the model they were developing their res…

1. Tristan's research direction was known to only a handful of other academics. It might help if you can be more specific regarding the origin of the contamination.

2. If someone did come out and claim that their ideas were used without proper attribution in Tristan's work, then of course, that deserves consideration.

3. What you're suggesting seems purely hypothetical. At present, there is nobody claiming that Tristan's work is "contaminated"

4. Tristan was very willing in his initial statement to give credit to the people who developed the ideas.

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

#59

Post by glimshe »

sobiolite wrote: post #52

We shouldn't forget that the only way this unpublished research is supposedly getting into the training data in the first place is because the researchers making the accusations were conversing with ChatGPT in the process of doing their own research on these problems. But if they are saying this contaminated the model's training data with knowledge of their ideas, who's to say the model they were developing their res…

This. I don't like people using others' work without giving proper credit. At the same time, people are jumping too quickly to defend these mathematicians without any solid evidence of their claims, while framing this as some sort of "Evil AI Company vs human mathematicians".

In the best case scenario, the mathematicians were standing on the shoulders of the extensive training data from sources that aren't being credited and they may not even have had access to.

I have nothing against these mathematicians because I don't know them. And given that, there's no reason to trust their word any more than OpenAI's.

It's possible the work they were doing, even if related, was a dead end and immaterial to OpenAI's findings. Or maybe they are right and OpenAI stole their work. Who knows the truth right now?

In other words, we need more evidence before making accusations.

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

#60

Post by xxs »

sylware wrote: post #44
xxs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

undisclosed ones in this case

What's they were hacked and their current work in progress 'stolen'? On my open source projects, there is always a big "WIP" messy phase which I don't "really" publish... because it is messy.

> they were hacked and their current work in progress 'stolen'

in most jurisdictions it'd constitute a crime.

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