OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem, says NYU mathematician
NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster announced three proofs on Tuesday, including a preliminary finding on the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the Millennium Prize problems. But his statement also alleges that OpenAI, after learning of his progress, used its massive computing resources to race ahead and publish a full proof first. Buckmaster claims OpenAI's team began after receiving information about his work, and that they even asked him to remove his collaborator's credit. OpenAI denies accessing specific user data but acknowledges the possibility that de-identified data from Buckmaster's Codex usage could have improved their models. The controversy reignites debates about AI's role in mathematics and research ethics.
If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.
- hatthew
I feel like this whole thing hinges on one point. OAI says[0]:
> However, our proofs differ significantly and even the precise results proved are different in the Euler case (forced vs unforced).
How true is this?
If the implied statement is true (i.e. OAI couldn't have stolen results because the results were so different anyways), then I feel like it's pretty clear that OAI solved the problem on their own, and offering some amount of credit to Tristan and Levent is generous. Though on the other hand it's dirty to have even attempted a scoop in the first place.
If the implied statement is false, and Tristan/Levent's results are a substantial portion of the solution to the millennium problem, then it's probably unintentional but clear plagiarism. I think it's plausible to assume that OAI has trained their models on Tristan's codex conversations, and so regardless of legal ownership, the academic ownership definitely includes Tristan and Levent.
The rest of the drama (individual statements and wordings, e.g. by Sebastien) seems like a bit of a red herring. Worth noting, but not worth basing conclusive judgements on regarding academic misconduct. Regardless, OAI does not seem like the good guys.
- cmiles8
OpenAI has a lot of explaining to do here.
The “least worst” representation of the course of events is that their researchers are just jerks, and not behaving in a manner that’s considered acceptable in the research community.
Other alleged scenarios just go downhill from there.
- golly_ned
Who is "Bubeck"? The article doesn't introduce him. Or give his name. Same with "Luis" and "Diego".
I am supposing it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9bastien_Bubeck
This is terrible:
When Buckmaster pushed to make the dispute public, he says that Bubeck replied: “Why would you ruin your career?” Buckmaster says that when he pushed back, Bubeck followed up with: “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”
- dumberquestions
The most sympathetic interpretation possible of the events for OAI is that they learned two mathematicians were closing in on a solution and decided to throw all of their weight behind getting there first, which honestly still doesn’t paint them in a particularly positive light.
- biophysboy
https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117237320796901560
Terrence Tao recently published an interesting take that zooms out from the details of the Navier Stokes drama.
Its an interesting observation he makes, because it is not dissimilar from the relatively common phenomenon of one academic lab getting scooped by another lab (usually by coincidence).