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>After hearing of the rumor, OpenAI started researching Navier Stokes with a new internal model. This is the most suspicious thing to me. If their chat data we

by viccis 8d ago

>After hearing of the rumor, OpenAI started researching Navier Stokes with a new internal model. This is the most suspicious thing to me. If their chat data were available to the corpus to be trained on (I thought they claimed not to do this?) then it really might be as simple as querying the model with "describe recent work from Tristan Buckmaster" and it will spit out this problem and his approach. No need to directly read his user data. This is basically just scooping, real scumbag behavior.

rakejake 8d ago
OAI doesn't need to mention Buckmaster's name directly in a prompt. They just need to select a basket of sessions that is guaranteed to contain Buckmaster's and then direct the LLM to attack only a specific method/angle. This is trivial to do while maintaining plausible deniability about not using his work.
- spongebobstoes 8d ago
  what reason do we have to believe that they did this? both things were proved by AI, isn't it logical that they could have very similar approaches? it is common that multiple people essentially simultaneously prove/invent the same thing I see zero evidence of wrongdoing
  - j16sdiz 8d ago
    This depends on what "proved by AI" meant. Was that a one shot prompt? or something guided by human, step by step? If that's the later, it won't use the same approach when not guided by the same human.
    - efavdb 7d ago
      Apparently Tristan was working on this problem for years, with AI providing help. Vs OpenAI spending a week with their new model, potentially having access to Tristan’s work.
  - rakejake 8d ago
    OAI started working on this only after they found out it was close to being solved. They threw a team of researchers who spent sleepless nights + a ton of compute. This is not exactly healthy academic competition - it's like if you spend a year hunting for oil fields and finally find a very promising area to be explored, only to find that Exxon tapped their entire exploration unit to go all in and and find it overnight just to stake claim to the discovery. Tao said it right - math should not be treated as a non-renewable resource to be mined.
    - spongebobstoes 8d ago
      that is not related to the accusation that they literally stole Buckmaster's work, which seems baseless I don't agree with the oil claim analogy. this is knowledge, freely given to the world. not something hoarded by a corporation
      - JumpCrisscross 8d ago
        > this is knowledge, freely given to the world Even if you’re starting from a position that credit for a discovery literally can’t be stolen, that still doesn’t resolve in OpenAI’s favor here.
        spongebobstoes 8d ago
        it seems like OAI tried to share, but didn't want to share with an Ant employee. a bit childish, but understandable to want to avoid a headline "Anthropic researcher solves Millennium problem" it seems like Buckmaster got one-upped and is upset. understandable, but I find their reaction childish as well
        JumpCrisscross 8d ago
        > OAI tried to share, but didn't want to share with an Ant employee Why does OpenAI get to dictate who Buckmaster can claim co-authorship with? > I find their reaction childish OpenAI may have, with full plausible deniability, taken Buckmaster’s work and passed it off—in substantial part—as their own. (Fitting into a fact pattern of them having tried to do the same with Apple.) There is a material takeaway for anyone who does creative or otherwise unique work from this. (Which is unfortunate. Whatever happened here, AI clearly accelerated the discovery process.) For anyone else, I agree it’s just drama.
  - JumpCrisscross 8d ago
    > what reason do we have to believe that they did this? The culture at OpenAI being systematically revealed by Apple’s lawsuit, for one.
lern_too_spel 8d ago
Then they say that they aren't sure if their model accessed the other researchers' private data. Why not wait until they know for sure, rerun in a way they can ensure doesn't access the other researchers' private data, or wait until the other researchers have published to make sure they're not stealing another person's work to build upon?

by viccis 8d ago

rakejake 8d ago

OAI doesn't need to mention Buckmaster's name directly in a prompt. They just need to select a basket of sessions that is guaranteed to contain Buckmaster's and then direct the LLM to attack only a specific method/angle. This is trivial to do while maintaining plausible deniability about not using his work.

spongebobstoes 8d ago
what reason do we have to believe that they did this? both things were proved by AI, isn't it logical that they could have very similar approaches? it is common that multiple people essentially simultaneously prove/invent the same thing I see zero evidence of wrongdoing
- j16sdiz 8d ago
  This depends on what "proved by AI" meant. Was that a one shot prompt? or something guided by human, step by step? If that's the later, it won't use the same approach when not guided by the same human.
  - efavdb 7d ago
    Apparently Tristan was working on this problem for years, with AI providing help. Vs OpenAI spending a week with their new model, potentially having access to Tristan’s work.
- rakejake 8d ago
  OAI started working on this only after they found out it was close to being solved. They threw a team of researchers who spent sleepless nights + a ton of compute. This is not exactly healthy academic competition - it's like if you spend a year hunting for oil fields and finally find a very promising area to be explored, only to find that Exxon tapped their entire exploration unit to go all in and and find it overnight just to stake claim to the discovery. Tao said it right - math should not be treated as a non-renewable resource to be mined.
  - spongebobstoes 8d ago
    that is not related to the accusation that they literally stole Buckmaster's work, which seems baseless I don't agree with the oil claim analogy. this is knowledge, freely given to the world. not something hoarded by a corporation
    - JumpCrisscross 8d ago
      > this is knowledge, freely given to the world Even if you’re starting from a position that credit for a discovery literally can’t be stolen, that still doesn’t resolve in OpenAI’s favor here.
      - spongebobstoes 8d ago
        it seems like OAI tried to share, but didn't want to share with an Ant employee. a bit childish, but understandable to want to avoid a headline "Anthropic researcher solves Millennium problem" it seems like Buckmaster got one-upped and is upset. understandable, but I find their reaction childish as well
        JumpCrisscross 8d ago
        > OAI tried to share, but didn't want to share with an Ant employee Why does OpenAI get to dictate who Buckmaster can claim co-authorship with? > I find their reaction childish OpenAI may have, with full plausible deniability, taken Buckmaster’s work and passed it off—in substantial part—as their own. (Fitting into a fact pattern of them having tried to do the same with Apple.) There is a material takeaway for anyone who does creative or otherwise unique work from this. (Which is unfortunate. Whatever happened here, AI clearly accelerated the discovery process.) For anyone else, I agree it’s just drama.
- JumpCrisscross 8d ago
  > what reason do we have to believe that they did this? The culture at OpenAI being systematically revealed by Apple’s lawsuit, for one.

lern_too_spel 8d ago

Then they say that they aren't sure if their model accessed the other researchers' private data. Why not wait until they know for sure, rerun in a way they can ensure doesn't access the other researchers' private data, or wait until the other researchers have published to make sure they're not stealing another person's work to build upon?