5 ms·

All of those statements sound true, based on what I've heard. - "very little human" input feels ambiguous, and if someone spends a few days prompting a model t

• enraged_camel 8d ago
  >> I'm not sure how any of this provides evidence that OpenAI took any of their work. Sorry, but the burden of proof lies in the other direction: OpenAI needs to definitively prove that their agents did not look at the existing work that was about to be published. Otherwise OpenAI simply stole the glory and the spotlight (and I'm being charitable here).
  • fc417fc802 8d ago
    That's entirely unreasonable. Allegations of malfeasance always need to be backed up by evidence.
    • nulld3v 8d ago
      Nobody except OpenAI knows whether or not OpenAI trained on their data. So the burden remains on OpenAI here.
      • fc417fc802 8d ago
        That is an absurd and entirely untenable position that breaks with approximately all western conventions. Only the CIA knows whether or not they're actively covering up reptilian space aliens exerting control over the US government. Therefore the burden of proof remains on the CIA to prove that they are not actively participating in such a scheme.
        • nulld3v 8d ago
          I don't understand, OpenAI can just say: "yes/no we did/did not train on your data". It's not a hard question to answer, and it is a question that OpenAI should be able to answer for all data we feed into ChatGPT.
          • fc417fc802 8d ago
            > It's not a hard question to answer I didn't realize you had insider knowledge about their systems. Do please explain for the class. As I understand it they will only have trained on his data if he consented to it. Do you have evidence that they do otherwise?
            • Timon3 8d ago
              This whole discussion is about evidence. That's not proof and it is not certain, but it is evidence pointing into the direction that OpenAI might be doing something that they're strongly incentivized to do. What kind of "evidence" do you see as necessary?
            • hellohello2 8d ago
              When someone authors a paper, is it on others to proove the author did not use their work as inspiration? No, it is on the author to give credit where it is due. You guys are acting as if it its legal issue, when it is not.
        • machomaster 8d ago
          You can never prove the negative.
      • tristanj 8d ago
        Incorrect, Buckmaster and Alpöge can comment if they had the ChatGPT "Improve the model for everyone" setting enabled or disabled. If it was enabled, then their work was included in the training dataset.
        • opello 8d ago
          In order for this to be the strong evidence everyone also has to believe that the setting is absolutely true. That some logging from some piece of the system could not also leak the prompt information in such a way that it could have been included as training data. Perhaps the design of how data is collected for the training dataset is so rigorous as to make this a practical impossibility. But, it's asking a lot without sufficient detail to completely exclude from possibility that one setting is all that could possibly have been absolutely load bearing in deciding if the other researcher's active efforts meaningfully contaminated the internal model. At least, as an ignorant outsider, that's how it seems to me.
        • pesacharia 8d ago
          As I understand it, that setting does not prevent them training on user data, just which derivatives are used (i.e. just PII scrubbed vs certain types of synthetic summarization)
    • Arodex 8d ago
      But the evidence is in the hand of the potential culprit. That's why allegations can be enough to force confiscation and intrusion to get evidence in safe hands before it is destroyed by the accused party.
      • fc417fc802 8d ago
        Only in the event that there is some reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Which would generally require evidence. You don't just get to subpoena your neighbor's bank account because "I know he's stealing from me" you need to first present credible evidence that you were stolen from and that he is among the most likely culprits.
        • Arodex 8d ago
          But I can subpoena my neighbours bank account when I see him driving a brand new 500'000$ car and I have a 490'000$ hole in my bank account and he works in the bank where my money is. And when questioned he evades some questions and threatens to destroy my career. Any other argument, fc417fc802?
          • tristanj 8d ago
            You're making a classic a burden-of-proof fallacy. The burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not the person questioning it. See Russell's teapot for an explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
            • magicalist 8d ago
              > You're making a classic a burden-of-proof fallacy This is incorrect, and you invoke Russell's teapot incorrectly too. It would only apply if the accusation rested solely on the fact that neither of us have evidence against the accusation. But that's not the case. First, we know that there could be proof, it's just apparently burdensome and expensive to produce. At that point you're not in fallacy land anymore, you just need a way to balance the cost required of someone to prove the accusations against them false. Second, we have an arguably plausible mechanism of action that OpenAI does not dispute is possible. This isn't a legal dispute, so no one is going to force OpenAI to do anything here, but it's not unreasonable (and certainly not fallacious) to suggest that Buckmaster's suggestions are plausible enough it's up to OpenAI to stand behind their denial.
    • hellohello2 8d ago
      But there is evidence, the blog post says: "While unlikely, we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models ." In other words, yes, they had been using ChatGPT, and yes, ChatGPT could very well have trained on their data. Now that there is evidence, we need an investigation: yes or no, was it the case?
      • fc417fc802 8d ago
        That is not an admission of malfeasance though? As I read it they don't know if anyone fed relevant private documents into the model under an account configured to permit training on user data. If there's more to the story I'd be interested to hear it.
        • hellohello2 8d ago
          Of malfeasance no, but they could have easily plagiarized unintentionally. If you commit mansalughter, you still need to explain yourself, even if it was a complete unlucky accident.
          • fc417fc802 8d ago
            So you're saying that they could have committed manslaughter, but acknowledge that we have no evidence that they did. So why should they need to explain themselves? Isn't is on the aggrieved party to bring evidence?
            • hellohello2 7d ago
              [dead]
    • airognio 8d ago
      That is backwards. It is the responsibility of a researcher to do a thorough literature review and conscientiously avoid plagiarism or claiming false novelty.
  • derangedHorse 8d ago
    > OpenAI needs to definitively prove that their agents did not look at the existing work that was about to be published. I don’t think they’re too concerned about appeasing you, enraged_camel. For most reasonable people, achievement in solving the other Millenium Prize problems at an unprecedented rate will be enough. At some point people will see models are capable of solving hard issues without whatever 0.00001% of the training data coming from irate individuals who believe their sample was the key component of the solution.
  • deleted 8d ago
    [deleted]
  • kamaal 8d ago
    How does one prove a negative ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#Proving_a_negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#P...
• whimsicalism 8d ago
  I'm confused, your employer very directly stated that they are unable to confirm that the model was not trained on the conversations.
  • tedsanders 6d ago
    We looked into it further and can confirm it was impossible for Dr. Buckmaster’s Codex prompts over the last two months to have influenced the system in any way, including training. If prompts were submitted earlier than that and training was not opted out, there's a chance they made their way into our training pipeline in some form. But this would be a droplet in an ocean and unlikely to have made any difference, imo. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/science/tristan-buckmaster-openai-math-navier-stokes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/science/tristan-buckmaste...
  • tristanj 8d ago
    The models are trained on the conversations of hundreds of millions of people. ChatGPT has several billion conversations every day. I estimate that the model that solved Navier–Stokes was trained on data from nearly a trillion conversations. It's unknowable and not possible to prove if any one specific conversation was the key to solving Navier–Stokes.
    • DetroitThrow 8d ago
      >It's unknowable and not possible to prove if any one specific conversation was the key to solving Navier–Stokes. If the conversation was in the training set, there's a high likelihood that the small set of conversations related to solving Navier-Stokes was used by the model. I get Astra to still quote some of my friends' books or blogposts nearly verbatim on certain niche issues. Much more importantly, we _can_ determine whether a conversation was used in the training data. And if it was, it gives us a great idea whether that logic was captured in reasoning for a novel problem never yet solved. Given that you don't see any of this as below the belt according to your other comments, maybe your contribution here is more for yourself than a fair conversation about attribution.
• DetroitThrow 8d ago
  It's unclear if you're suggesting that OpenAI did not train on their input or use their chats as inputs to training on a model that found the solution. Let's not provide an Elizabeth Holmes-esque interview where the question is dodged and words gain new meaning. The question can be answered with "Yes, we trained on their conversations" or "No, we did not train on their conversations". I'm not coming from a place of distrust here. This should just be definitively answerable given the weight of the claims here. Surely between you, your lawyers, and other members of your team you can just clear this part up.
• carzilla 8d ago
  You don’t work on the team that did the proof yet you can with certainty make all of these claims?